


Precipitation

by minhyukie (thelogicoftaste)



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 07:02:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16236617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelogicoftaste/pseuds/minhyukie
Summary: Then, all at once, it seems like there’s just a thin wall front separating them and whatever is on the other side.The hair on Jinyoung’s nape stands on end, goosebumps rising over his skin. The sound is evenly spaced apart, like footsteps - or a body, slithering inside brick and plaster.





	Precipitation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pepijr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepijr/gifts).



> Prompt: jaebum and jinyoung investigate some strange noises coming from the bathroom walls.
> 
> dear pepijr: thank you for your prompt!! i'm like 87% sure this is not what you wanted or expected with this prompt haha! but i really do hope you like it!
> 
> thank you to Hayley for hosting the exchange and giving me a chance to flex some writing muscles! I hope you guys enjoy reading, happy halloween! 
> 
> please read me! this is based on supernatural (the tv show) and this fic mentions some disturbing things even though they're not explicitly shown. that includes death (mention of children) and child poverty (implied prolonged hunger). so please proceed with caution!

It’s raining.

It’s not torrential by any means. Just a continual mist from a mottled, grey sky; raindrops bouncing off of the worn-down tarmac of the road. It’s also bitterly cold, Jinyoung thinks, the type that digs into the grooves of his teeth.

He’s glad to be insulated in the car, huddled into the warmth of the passenger seat.

The sound of the rain is heavy in his ears, blending in with the deep, even rumble of the car.

But besides that, it’s quiet. There’s no music drifting from the radio, no chatter between him and Jaebum. They’ve been driving for hours now, only having breached Gangwon as dawn broke.

Jaebum runs a tired hand over his face before gripping the corded leather of the steering wheel once more. His eyes flicker from one side to the other over the road, the plastic blades on the windshield clearing sheets of rainwater from side to side  - making way for a few blurry seconds of unobstructed view.

Jinyoung doesn’t know how he can keep going for so long. The yellow lamps, dotted unevenly down the road, distort through the window, streaming into his eyes.

His fingers curl into the crushed edges of his notebook, the front leather cover is warm against the thin skin of his wrist. There’s a crudely drawn figure - sharp edges defined in blue ink, some sharp fangs beneath the suggestion of a mouth, and Jaebum’s rushed handwriting.

Jinyoung licks over his dry lips, sighing deeply. He’s bored. And the cheap white button-down he’s wearing is scratchy against his neck, wrinkled at the elbows; scalded where he couldn’t quite get last night’s motel iron to work properly.

“How long?” he asks aloud, tilting his head with a stretch.

Jaebum hums, distracted with concentration. He glances over at him after a second; dark eyes bleached caramel in the early sunlight. He’s squinting, trying to see Jinyoung better.

“What?”

“How long?” Jinyoung repeats, flipping the notebook closed. He tosses it behind him, cushioned into the backseat over their discarded blazers. It hasn’t been of any use, anyway. “Until we get there?”

Jaebum’s gaze flicks over to the GPS, struggling to calibrate in the sparseness of the rural north. It’s bumpier now, less industrialised.

“Maybe ten or fifteen,” he replies. There’s something a little red about his eyes. “We’re already in Sabuk.”

It’s not long until he turns a wide corner, slowing to a sidle as they pass a convenience store.

It’s one of the old style ones. One of those all-in-one, mom & pop stores that Jinyoung always thought was fiction - television fancy - before he left the city for the backwaters of South Korea.

Yet, there’s still a relatively new feel to it. It’s tall, at least two stories, with an electric store sign and large windows beneath a short awning. It’s tucked between a row of stores decorated to the gills with fancy lightbox fixtures.

But it’s empty too. The lights turned off. Doors shut. People nowhere to be seen. Except for one lone man, stacking wooden pallets filled with produce outside the convenience store.

His head perks up in their direction when he hears the rolling motor of the car - pallet in hand.

Jaebum stops the car by the curbside, rolling down the window on Jinyoung’s side - closest to the storefront.

It takes a few moments, but sure enough, hesitantly, the man outside the store places down his pallet.

“What are you doing?” Jinyoung asks Jaebum, frowning as he leans across him to open the glovebox. The stranger outside starts towards them.

“Asking for directions,” Jaebum replies, pushing back one of the multiple worn-leather badge-holders. He finds the one he’s looking for and snaps the compartment shut just as the stranger arrives at Jinyoung’s window.

He’s far younger than Jinyoung expected him to be. Tall and lean; still carrying baby fat around the curves of his face, with a mop of brown hair. A teenager.

He squints into the car, raindrops soaking into the shirt beneath his apron. The windshield blades groan against the glass.  

“You needing to go somewhere?” he asks.

Jinyoung can see his eyes briefly flicker over the dark furnishings of Jaebum’s car in curiosity.

“Yangdong,” Jaebum says, leaning over slightly. “GPS isn’t working too well.”

“Those things are terrible around here,” the kid says with a crooked smile. He shakes his head, a raindrop catching on his eyelash, and then dripping over the beauty mark beneath his eye. “No signal. You’re looking for the apartments?”

“No,” Jinyoung says, bringing the stranger’s attention to himself properly. “There should be a house near there. By the rice paddies.”

The boy’s face freezes. Then it changes completely. His smile drops, wariness creeps into the rigidity of his body. His eyes swing from Jinyoung to Jaebum.

“Who’s asking?”

Jaebum turns off the ignition; the car falling silent almost immediately. The rain seems louder now, with the tension.

So he does know, Jinyoung thinks. Or at least, he’s heard about it. The set of his mouth betrays his nervousness.

Beside him, Jaebum opens the leather wallet in his hand - propping it wide open between two fingers and his thumb with practiced ease.

“Lee Hoseok,” he says, turning it sideways to show the ID and then upright for the gold, embossed badge on the other side. “N.I.S. This is my partner, Kim Minseok.”

The kid stares at them, eyes huge in his face. Jinyoung can just imagine what he’s thinking. The NIS, in his tiny town?

“Because of the-,” he says now, then he stops  - eyes boring into Jaebum’s.

Jinyoung wonders what he would say if he didn’t cut himself off.

Accident? Or attempted murder?

“Just the address,” Jaebum replies, depositing the wallet on the dashboard. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

The kid nods, rattling off some directions.

It’s not until Jaebum restarts the car, heading in the direction of Yangdong, that Jinyoung notices an older man.

He’s standing in the doorway of the convenience store; stockily built and wearing the same type of dusty beige apron as the kid.

He wipes his hand on his rag, eyes following the car, long after they drive past.

-

“Seriously,” Jinyoung says, closing the passenger door a second behind Jaebum. “You don’t think that’s weird?”

They’ve parked by the curbside of the outskirts of Sabuk, where suburbia starts to meet the rural outlands.

There are only a few detached houses on this street, modestly sized but with sprawling masses of rice paddies behind them in the distance.

“I think,” Jaebum says, adjusting his dark navy blazer. He walks around the front of the car, “that you’re thinking too much about it.”

Jaebum tucks his keys into the palm of his hand and opens the metal gate to the last house, the Han family home. It has a short stone path overgrown with bushy, yellowing weeds in between the cracks. Outside, by the curb is a big family car. Jaebum stands aside, letting Jinyoung go in first.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he concludes.

They pause outside the front door, Jinyoung frowning hard. Jaebum didn’t see the man outside the convenience store, and Jinyoung _knows_ his reaction would be different if he did. There’s something about that man. He’s sure about it.

“Hyung-”

“There are always eyes on us when we get into a new town,” Jaebum interrupts, gentle but firm. He knocks on the door with three sharp knocks and then he looks at Jinyoung, a warning in his gaze. Quietly, he adds, “Just as there are right now.”

Over the road, a curtain twitches.

Jinyoung shares a look with Jaebum.

“Have I ever been wrong?”

“Yes,” Jaebum laughs, whacking Jinyoung in the shoulder. “Multiple times actually.”

“There’s something weird, about this.”

“I agree,” Jaebum assures him, “but that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

Jinyoung opens his mouth to respond, annoyed at Jaebum’s dismissiveness, but the door swings open.

A woman shuffles from behind it, tiredness marking the thin skin underneath her eyes. She’s young. Probably not that much older than Jaebum is, with a thick brown bob pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck.

She pauses, taking in their badly pressed suits and unfamiliar faces. “Yes?”

Jinyoung reaches into the inner pocket of his blazer, Jaebum echoing the movement. They present their badges and identity cards to the woman.

Quickly though - wouldn’t want her to look too closely, after all.

“Kim Minseok,” Jinyoung introduces himself with a dip of his head. “And my partner Lee Hoseok. N.I.S. Are you Kim Hyunsun-ssi?”

The woman blinks, shaking her head. “N.I.S.?”

“Yes,” Jaebum explains. “National Intelligence Service.”

“I know what it is,” she says, voice measured even with the sharp undercurrent of stress. “I’m just wondering why you’re here. We’ve already spoken to the police.”

“It’s protocol,” Jaebum cuts in swiftly. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard, but we have a few more questions to ask you. May we come in?”

It takes a hesitant second, but then she’s opening the door wider; stepping back so they can enter.

The entryway is dimly lit, the dark wood of the stairs and the wall panels absorbing the daylight that streams from the kitchen window right at the other side.

The young woman watches them take off their shoes.

“Park Hyunsun is my mother,” she tells them, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “I’m Sunhwa. Han Sunhwa. Please, come this way.”

-

Jinyoung loves silence. Sometimes, he gets it when he’s reading in whichever motel they’ve stopped at for the night.

Other times, it’s not exactly silence - but the comfortable absence of conversation. When he and Jaebum sit shivering underneath the plastic covering of an outdoor eatery or accompanied by the regular cadence of the car, or - much more rarely - wrapped up close together under thin bedsheets.

But Jinyoung also hates silence in equal measure.

He’s hot under the collar, sitting beside Jaebum on a stiff leather sofa that squeaks with every move he makes.

There’s also a clock somewhere.

Jinyoung’s eyes try to follow the sound, just for something to do. Eventually, he finds the source: a plastic kitchen wall clock tucked beneath one of the open flaps of a cardboard box.

The Hans were in the middle of moving. Before.

Now, Park Hyunsun and her two daughters sit opposite Jinyoung and Jaebum in their living room, with an abandoned kitchen wall clock dragging heavily through each second.

“I still don’t understand,” she says. Her eyes are swollen, her voice quiet. But she has the same shaped eyes as Sunhwa, and her youngest daughter, Sunmi. She’s clutching at her mug, thumb rubbing over the chipped porcelain rim. “The police-, the local force have already seen to us about the accident. We’ve answered all we could.”

This is Jinyoung’s least favourite part of the job. It’s never easy dealing with someone who’s hurt. Particularly when you’re questioning them as their child’s life hangs in the balance.

Jaebum grimaces sympathetically, he’s already asked her so much.

He leans forward, placing his mug on the low coffee table - right next to where Jinyoung abandoned his.

“We just need to build a timeline of what happened,” he says gently. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary before your husband collapsed?”

She presses her lips together, deep wrinkles around her mouth. “He was withdrawn. Worried that- because of the heat, the crops might fail. He was always out there, under the sun. With the stress,” she taps her chest with her fingers, fingernails cut to the quick. “It wasn’t good for his heart.”

Jaebum nods, scribbling down notes in his notepad.

It wasn’t a heart attack that seized Han Heeyeol though. The medical records that Jinyoung had intercepted confirmed as much.

He’d collapsed near the market, convulsing in the town square - lungs filled with water, overflowing from his mouth and nose.

Jinyoung takes a deep breath, his own notebook pressed flat between both palms, elbows resting on his thighs.

He makes unintentional eye-contact with Hyunsun’s youngest daughter, Sunmi. She can’t be much younger than he is. She’s been staring at him, startling when she sees him looking before she quickly averts her eyes.

She hasn’t said much since they’ve entered the living room. Instead, she hovers behind her mother’s seat, fingers twitching on the lace doily thrown across the back.

Jaebum flips over the sheet of his pad, “How about your son, madam? He’s in the same hospital as your husband?”

Hyunsun nods, grasping her mug tighter. “Yes.”

She doesn’t say any more, but her pain is clear to see on her face.

Jinyoung looks at Sunmi, then Sunhwa in turn.

“Could you tell us what happened?”

Sunhwa returns his gaze plainly. But Jinyoung can see wetness smeared at the corner of her eyes.

“He drowned,” she says, voice skipping when her mother draws a sharp intake of air. “Upstairs. In the bathroom.”

Jinyoung takes a quiet breath, “On purpose?”

“Kim Minseok-ssi,” Sunmi interrupts, sharp. It’s the most she’s said until now. Her eyes are wide, almost indignant if there wasn’t sadness in there too. She places a white-knuckled hand over her mother’s shoulder. “Don’t you think that’s too much?”

“Sunmi,” her mother says before Jinyoung can formulate an answer. “Please replenish our guests’ tea. It must have gone cold by now.”

There’s a moment of silence, dismissal clear as can be. Sunmi runs a pale hand through her long hair, tucking one side behind her ear.

She doesn’t argue. Instead, she sidesteps the armchair, picking up both mugs on the coffee table before disappearing into the hall towards the kitchen.

Hyunsun waits until she’s sure she’s out of hearing, then she turns to Jinyoung and Jaebum on the couch.

“It was an accident,” she says, voice still so quiet - but she matches their gazes evenly. “Or a curse. But it was not purposeful. My son wasn’t in the bathtub. He lay on the floor with water flooding his chest. How could that be purposeful?”

“I’m sorry,” Jinyoung replies, sincere. “I had to ask.”

“I know,” she says. “But I’ve told you all I know. There’s nothing I can do or say other than pray they wake up again. I don’t know anything.”

There’s a heavy, weighted silence.

“I think,” Sunhwa cuts in delicately, “we should wrap it up here.”

Jaebum flips his notebook shut, standing up. Jinyoung stands after him.

“We’d like to take a look upstairs before we leave. Could we?”

“Okay,” Sunhwa says, hesitance making her words sticky. “I’ll show you the way.”

Each step on the staircase creaks in a particular way - loud and jarring. Sunhwa seems to know how to avoid most of it.

“This is an old house,” Jaebum remarks as she goes ahead in front of them.

“Yes,” she replies, turning back to glance at them. “Must be over a hundred by now.”

The bathroom she leads them to is at the end of a short corridor, right next to a closed bedroom door. The words ‘Sunwoo’s room, stay out!!!’ are scribbled in messy hangul on a sticker tacked on to the surface, curled over at the corner with age.

“Thank you for coming,” Sunhwa says, standing just outside the bathroom. She doesn’t step inside, she doesn’t look in its direction either. Instead, she offers them a brittle smile. “Despite everything, we’re glad to know you’re trying to get to the bottom of this too.”

“Of course,” Jaebum says. “It’s our job. We’ll make sure you’re safe.”

That gives her some pause, and she frowns a little at that, not quite understanding. “Thank you,” she repeats after a beat. “I’ll be downstairs if there’s anything you need.”

-

The bathroom is relatively modern and spacious. A big tub sits in on the far end, just beneath the frosted window. The shower-head is mounted on the side wall.

A mirror takes a big part of the wall closest to Jinyoung, all types of cosmetic products litter the sink-space. From shaving gel, to mask packs, to mists and hand creams.

In stark contrast, there’s nothing on the tiny white tiles that make up the floor.

It’s spotless, even though Jinyoung knows that several people - from paramedics to toxicologists to police officers - have been all over this bathroom in the past couple of days.

Jaebum steps in carefully, Sunhwa’s steps down the stairs growing fainter.

Jinyoung steps in right after him, pulling out a pair of latex gloves; passing the right hand to him.

They hurriedly look through the bathroom, taking pictures on their phones to analyse later.

Jinyoung steps through the middle of the floor, where he imagines Han Sunwoo must have fallen.

It feels weird because he knows a young boy almost died here. But as he stands there, there isn’t anything beyond that - nothing that feels sinister, or tangible. Just an uneasiness.

He takes care to look at every section carefully, not wanting to miss anything vital.

“Found anything?” Jaebum asks, he’s flicking through a pile of small eyeshadow palettes.

“No,” Jinyoung sighs. He doesn’t even know _what_ they’re supposed to be looking for - inscriptions? Markings? Sulphur? “Have you?”

“No,” Jaebum replies, tiredness seeping through his voice. He runs his ungloved hand through his black hair, dark eyes flickering to the door before settling back on Jinyoung’s face. “What do you think?”

“Of this?” Jinyoung wavers. Jaebum nods. “Secondary, dry drownings do happen.”

“They’re not common though,” Jaebum replies. “And they would have had to almost drown a first time, you’d think their family would know about it. Even then, both father and son? Months apart?”

“Once is a freak accident,” Jinyoung agrees. “Twice is-.” He stops, mouth drying. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Jaebum asks, alert. But scarcely before he’s finished, the sound happens again.

Deep and onerous, it sounds like-

“It’s coming from the wall,” Jaebum says, stepping towards it.

Jinyoung’s hand darts out automatically, grasping the other man around the wrist. Their eyes meet.

“Be careful,” Jinyoung says to him. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“It could be nothing.” 

“It could be _something_ ,” Jinyoung fires back, fingers tightening on Jaebum’s wrist. But he steps forward to stand beside him anyway. There’s no question that he’d dive head-first into whatever kind of nonsense Jaebum comes up with.

They step closer to the wall. Jinyoung strains his ears, but the sound has stalled.

Together, they wait a few tense seconds.

It starts up again like it’s a million miles away, getting louder in each instance. Then, all at once, it seems like there’s just a thin wall front separating them and whatever is on the other side.

The hair on Jinyoung’s nape stands on end, goosebumps rising over his skin. The sound is evenly spaced apart, like footsteps - or a body, slithering inside brick and plaster.

It matches his heartbeat so finely that he feels dizzy, like it’s all in his head. But Jaebum hears it too - the metallic, rusted scrape of movement.

He pulls out his phone, recording the sound, and he looks troubled, mouth pressed into a thin line.

Jinyoung’s still clinging to him. Realising only now how his fingers curl into the starched cuff of his shirt for comfort, how he leans into his warmth.

“Can you see that?” Jaebum asks him, phone still directed at the wall.

When Jinyoung looks, his heart rate jumps up a notch. The wall is wet.

It’s completely soaked through. Beads of water are seeping out, faster and faster, dripping down the wall and pooling on the floor.

He glances quickly at the screen on Jaebum’s phone - it shows nothing out of the ordinary. Just a wall and nothing more.

But in Jinyoung’s eyes, he can see it.

Instinctively, his hand reaches towards it - wanting to know if this is just an illusion.

“Glove,” Jaebum reminds him quietly, eyes still on the screen.

Jinyoung switches hands, pressing his gloved fingertips on the wall for a brief moment. When he pulls back, he swipes his fingers over each other, before showing Jaebum.

Water clings to the glove. He touches the wall again - it’s ice cold, like plunging into a lake in the middle of winter. The wall feels soaked too, closer to mushy wet paper than anything else.  

Jaebum reaches out with his gloved band to touch it too, eyes sharp - taking in everything.

A voice, from behind them. “What are you doing?”

Jinyoung jumps, though he tries to hide it.

It’s Sunmi, standing just outside the threshold to the bathroom. Her gaze swings from Jinyoung to Jaebum. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jaebum assures her with a ready-made smile.

Jinyoung glances back at the wall - it’s no longer wet. Dry and stable, just as it was when they first entered.

He glances down at his gloved fingers. The bone-deep chill is still there, and so is the moisture.

Sunmi eyes the empty centre of the bathroom. Then, hesitantly, she steps forward, barefooted on the tile.

“Are you sure?” she asks. “Have you found something that could help?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Jinyoung tells her. He puts his hand behind his back. “We need more time.”

She nods, slowly.

The noise from the wall returns, then. Only once - but heavy and dense.

Sunmi’s head whips towards the noise, colour draining out of her already pale face. Her eyes flicker to Jaebum.

He rips off his glove with a tacky, elastic noise. “You heard that?”

Her gaze wavers between the two of them.

“Yes,” she says, glancing quickly at the wall. “It’s just the pipes.”

Jinyoung watches her carefully. He runs his tongue over his dry lips, takes a risk, “You really believe that?”

Her lips part, her voice is scratchy. “It’s an old house.”

“How long have you been hearing that noise?” Jinyoung counters. But he says it gently, not wanting to startle her away. “Did your Appa and your brother hear it too?”

Her eyes widen. Downstairs, Sunhwa yells for her sister.

Sunmi doesn’t hesitate. She turns quickly, rushing down the stairs, long hair trailing behind her.

In the heavy silence that proceeds, Jinyoung chances a glance at Jaebum, where the other man stares at the empty doorway.

“Too much?” Jinyoung asks.

Jaebum takes a deep breath before turning to him.

“No,” he says, eyes on Jinyoung. “No, just enough, I think.”

-

“Well,” Jinyoung remarks later. As Jaebum stands back to let him through the door of their motel room. “That was weird.”

Jaebum had been in a pensive mood the entire car ride back, driving carefully through unfamiliar streets.

They’ve picked a motel just outside the centre of town, and park in a slot furthest away from the three other cars dotted around.

It’s a spacious room at least, with two queen sized beds separated by a nightstand.

Jinyoung pokes his head into the bathroom - the light is dim, and it’s small and cramped. But at least it’s clean (and there are no weeping walls).

There’s an old TV tucked in the corner, plugged in but turned off, and right next to it is a small round table and two chairs.

Jaebum sits on the bed on the right, dumping his duffel bag behind him. He’s discarded his jacket, unbuttoned his collar, and loosened his tie.

He hums. “It was.”

Jinyoung sits opposite him - slowly making his way through a mini nut-mix packet that he’d found in the mini-fridge.

The sound of paper cuts through the air as Jaebum flicks through his notepad.

Jinyoung dusts off the thin layer of dust from the remote control on the bedside table and turns on the TV. Of course, only one channel works.

KBS is currently airing the tail end of a regional newsreel - a woman in a tailored maroon dress points to a green screen indicating the weather patterns for Gangwon.

“More rain?” Jinyoung mumbles to himself, half-heartedly eating his snack.

The woman points further north, where on-screen numbers dip far closer to freezing cold than he would like. “Great.”

He turns off the TV, regarding Jaebum instead.

“So what do you think?” Jinyoung ventures after a few minutes of silence. “Ghost?”

“Could be,” Jaebum murmurs. He reaches back, slipping the padded leather notebook out of a side pocket. “It’d have to be a hell of a powerful one.”

He flicks through all the entries they have on gwisin which, admittedly, is not much. So it doesn’t take long at all.

When Jaebum’s done, he passes it to Jinyoung before placing his hands flat on the bed behind himself - stretching out his spine.

His head is tipped back and he groans, his neck a long sinuous line with a prominent Adam's apple. Jinyoung’s stomach churns, eyes sliding from Jaebum’s wide shoulders to his slim waist.

He jerks his eyes away, standing up quickly. They’ve only come to drop off their things anyway.

“We’ve got to get going,” he says to Jaebum, coughing to mask the thinness in his voice. “We have a meeting with the good officers of Sabuk down at the station.”

-

The motel isn’t too far from the police station, just inside walking distance. There are more people milling about now. It’s nearing lunchtime, getting warmer, and the rain has temporarily stopped.

So the mom & pop convenience store from this morning, when they enter, has a few people wandering about its slim, tall aisles.

Jinyoung slides a discounted three-pack of rice-balls and an iced tea over to the small single-manned cash register. Jaebum appears only for a second to place his sandwich and a small carton of strawberry milk before migrating to the newspaper stand.

They’re only here to grab a quick bite to eat, before they’re on their way. Jinyoung’s head is still full of thoughts from what happened at the Hans’.

He takes his wallet (his real one, this time) from his pocket absentmindedly. Although he’s distantly aware of the cashier staring at him from his stool on the other side of the counter, in front of a backroom door that’s been left ajar. It’s the boy from this morning.

The beep of the scanner is monotonous, and the movement of the cashier allows Jinyoung a glimpse at the three hastily scrawled name characters on his plastic name tag.

“Rains a lot here,” Jinyoung says to him, Yugyeom, just for conversation. “Doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” the kid replies, swiping Jaebum’s strawberry milk one, two, three times before it beeps. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Jinyoung hums. He leans a little on the counter, flicks the plastic promotional offer hanging off a display of chewing gum. “You were much friendlier this morning.”

Yugyeom finishes bagging, gathering the plastic handles before handing it over the counter to Jinyoung. “I’m just doing my job.”

Jinyoung takes it, one hand in his pocket. He eyes the nervousness in Yugyeom’s face. He can’t be much older the sixteen or seventeen - right around the age of Han Sunwoo.

“You live here your whole life, Yugyeom?”

A bell rings someone’s entrance to the store. Jinyoung hears the scratch of a pair of shoes scrubbed off on the welcome mat, the door closing with a slam.

“Yes,” he says. And then, “How do you know my name?”

Jinyoung smirks, feels a little cruel when the kid’s eyes widen a little. “It’s on your nametag.”

Yugyeom’s head drops immediately to verify.

“Oh,” he says, cheeks flushing just slightly. “Right.”

“Did you know Han Sunwoo?”

Yugyeom presses his lips together, swallowing tightly.

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“He-,” the kid hesitates, before he makes up his mind to look Jinyoung in the eye. “He drowned.”

“He did,” Jinyoung agrees. From the corner of his eye, he can see that Jaebum’s abandoned the newspapers to watch the exchange. Yugyeom’s eyes flicker nervously from one to the other. “It’s a little strange, isn’t it? Drowning on land. The same thing happening to his dad.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Yugyeom says, wringing his hands on his apron.

“I know,” Jinyoung assures him, because he’s sure of it. Call it a gut feeling, or too many years in this job. The kid’s eyes are earnest, Jinyoung will take that at face value. “But I also know that you probably know more than you think. I just need a little help to figure things out.”

From the door behind Yugyeom, the man from this morning walks out. He looks surprised to see Jinyoung, but his features quickly fall to distaste when he sees Yugyeom curled in on himself on the stool.

He steps forward, placing a hand on the kid’s shoulder, glaring at Jinyoung and Jaebum in turn.

Over by the side, an older gentleman emerges from the aisles holding a carton of milk and a packet of instant cake mix. He watches them warily, the tension palpable.  

“Can I help you?” the man next to Yugyeom asks. He’s already on the defensive, and Jinyoung needs to tread carefully.

“No, sir,” he starts, stomach churning. He can sense Jaebum drifting closer. “I was just asking Yugyeom about the accident that happened here a few days ago.”

“We don’t know anything about that,” the man replies, eyes hard. “Who are you?”

Yugyeom squirms, “N.I.S.”

They exchange a glance, full of meaning that Jinyoung can’t even begin to parse out.

“My son is a minor,” the man says, tearing his gaze from Yugyeom to look at Jinyoung. “You have no right to be questioning him like this without me.”

“It’s not an interrogation,” Jaebum says finally, just over Jinyoung’s shoulder. His voice too carries the undercurrent of the tension in the small convenience store. “As far as we know your son has done nothing wrong. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

The man - Mr. Kim - sweeps his gaze from Jaebum to Jinyoung, and back again. His hand tightens on Yugyeom’s shoulder.

“Yes,” he bites out. Then, “I see you have finished with your purchase. I have a customer waiting, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“That’s no problem,” Jinyoung says quickly, cutting off whatever Jaebum was going to say. “Thank you for your service,” he glances down, “and for all your help, Yugyeom.”

Yugyeom gives him an uneasy smile, while his father bows stiffly. Jinyoung herds Jaebum out of the store before they really start something they can’t finish.

-

“What are you thinking?” Jinyoung asks Jaebum, when he can’t take the silence much longer. They’re five minutes away from the convenience store now, navigating some back alleys on the way to the station.

The few slithers of sunshine from the morning are already disappearing now, the clouds rolling back in. It looks like it might rain.

Jinyoung is still holding the plastic bag full of their food, but they both seem to have lost their appetite. Jaebum hasn’t said a single word since they walked out, jaw tight with tension, brows furrowed tightly.

He has a habit of shutting in on himself when he’s deep in thought - trying to figure out a tricky situation.

But even with all that thinking, it’s like he hasn’t figured out how much it frustrates Jinyoung - how it worries him also - when he cuts him off so abruptly.

“Hyung,” Jinyoung tries. Silence. Then he tries again, louder, stopping in his tracks and grasping at Jaebum’s blazer with his fingers. “Hey, stop for a second.”

“What?” Jaebum snaps. He’s looking at Jinyoung like he’s forgotten he was even there.

Jinyoung levels him with a hard look, trying not to show the hurt. His fingers fall away, “Don’t speak to me like that.”

Jaebum’s face crumples.

“I’m sorry,” he says, seeing it anyway. He speaks slower, lower. “I’m trying to make sense of this. I shouldn’t take it out on you. I know that.”

He reaches for Jinyoung’s wrist, but Jinyoung twists his hand away, pretending he didn’t see the gesture.

“We’ve barely been here half a day,” he says resuming their walking pace. “We don’t know everything yet.”

“I know,” Jaebum tells him, matching him. “But I feel like there’s something we’re missing. Gwisin are tethered to one place, so how could it affect two people so far away from each, months apart? And Sabuk is landlocked, there probably aren’t any sea creatures lurking around either.”

“Maybe it was summoned,” Jinyoung suggests, trying to let his own frustration to roll off of his back. He can see the station in the distance, a slither of a building in the opening gap of the alley. “Whatever it is. Like a vengeful spirit.”

“Or,” Jaebum hedges, uneasiness back on the line of his mouth. “A demon.”

Jinyoung’s heartbeat slows. He takes a deep, even breath. “Can we handle a demon?”

They’ve never done it before, not by themselves. Even though Jinyoung has read almost everything there is to read about them.

“We’re going to have to,” Jaebum replies. “If it comes down to it. We won’t have a choice.”

Jinyoung bites down on his bottom lip. Demons are powerful, sly things. Dealing with them means dealing with possession of innocent people - things Jinyoung isn’t sure they can handle.

All they have to their names is a car trunk full of weapons, and badly memorised exorcism incantations.

Jaebum at least has a familiarity with demons, coming from a family of hunters.

Jinyoung though, he has seen a demon in person only once, not that he remembers much about it other than the grief and terror embroiled in his memories.

“I don’t know if I can handle that,” he says quietly. It hasn’t been easy, knowing that everything he was afraid of as a child and more exists. Demons though. That’s a step too far.

Jaebum doesn’t reply. He doesn’t really understand being on the other side of it.

Before he can say anything else, there’s a crash from behind them; muted voices and a scuffle.

Instinctively, Jaebum pulls out the gun tucked into the back of his waistband. He grips the magazine base decorated with a swirled marbled effect. The gleaming silver of the barrel, engraved with Hangul - the characters for Nora - in between stylised engravings of mugunghwa flowers.

Jinyoung’s a little slower on the uptake, but he follows after Jaebum, sliding out his black-handled knife, as the other man presses a finger to his lips and wanders back the way they came.

It’s a maze of alleyways here, but the sound is easy to follow. Jinyoung stands behind where Jaebum pokes his head around the corner. He can’t hear clear voices anymore, but he can hear the distinct noise of fighting.

Jaebum curses under his breath, tucking away his gun as he steps into the mouth of the alley.

 _“Hey,"_  he yells, so loud and sharp it cuts straight through Jinyoung. He follows after him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

There are three children - probably barely old enough to be in middle school - huddled around the wall, eyes wide in their faces, cheeks red with exertion.

Their dark navy uniforms are more or less pristine underneath their overcoats and bulky bags. But their school shoes are full of dirt and mud where they’ve been kicking.

Jinyoung doesn’t understand the anger in Jaebum’s voice until a small movement catches his eye. It’s barely there, a twitch.

Between the children and the dirty wall is another child, drooped down low as can be against the wall.

Jinyoung can only see a mop of unruly hair, and glimpses of tattered sneakers. He glances at the other children, whose expressions bear an array of guilt and indignance.

“What are you doing?” Jaebum repeats, stepping in further. “Shouldn’t you be at home instead of out here fighting like dogs?”

One of the children, towards the back, with a small pointed face, darts a look behind him - face falling at the dead-end.

The one closest to them is the shortest in stature, though clearly the most confident one.

“Who are you?” he demands, but there’s a waver in his tone.

“The police,” Jaebum snaps. The three children recoil almost instantly, the chubbier one tugging at the ring-leader.

“Wonjae,” he whispers urgently, eyes not leaving Jaebum (even though Jaebum’s eyes have wandered back the child still trembling on his haunches against the wall). “Wonjae, we should go. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Wonjae shakes off the other kid, shrugging his shoulders so his backpack stops sliding off.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, arms stiff and aggressive at his side.

Jinyoung can’t contain an eye roll.

“You don’t have to believe him,” he says, bringing the children’s attention to him. “But your parents will.”

Wonjae swallows tightly.

“Right, Wonjae?”

The kid’s expression wilts for only a second before he’s screwing it up in furious defence. “He stole my chocolate bar.”

“So you ganged up on him?” asks Jaebum.

“It’s _my_ chocolate bar, I bought it. It’s _mine_.”

“That’s _enough,_ ” Jinyoung interrupts. He stares each of them in turn, especially Jaebum. From the side, two round eyes peer curiously, warily up at him.

“That’s enough,” he repeats. “You’d better not let me catch you fighting again, because you’ll get more than just a talking to.”

“But my chocolate bar,” Wonjae whines, hands curling at his sides.

“No,” he cuts him off sharply. They watch him, wide-eyed. He lifts his eyebrows. “Scram.”

They don’t hesitate, backpacks smacking against their backs as they dash out of the alleyway, Wonjae trailing behind them.

Jinyoung watches them go, but Jaebum is already stepping forward, closer to the child left by the wall.

He eyes Jaebum warily but is surprisingly pliant in his hold - standing up as Jaebum gently guides him.

Jaebum bends down, using his palm to carefully dust off the dirt from the kid’s knees.

He’s tiny, even smaller than the other children, with a small pointed chin, dirty hair and mistrustful eyes. He can’t be older than ten or eleven, Jinyoung guesses, even though the pouch of baby fat in his cheeks makes him seem younger. There’s something about his eyes.

And there, clutched in a death-grip in one skinny hand is a chocolate bar.

“Are you alright?” Jaebum is asking him, dusting him off ineffectively.

Jinyoung isn’t really expecting an answer, so it surprises him to hear the rough affirmation tumble from the kid’s mouth. He peers at Jinyoung, then at Jaebum.

He manages to extricate himself from Jaebum’s fussing, shuffling back until his back hits the wall.

The only thing Jinyoung can really grasp about this kid is how dirty he is. From his thin, ragged shirt and tattered corduroy trousers, to the dirt caked on his tanned skin and dark hair, and under his fingernails.

“Are you alright?” Jaebum asks him. He reaches out a hand, slowly, but stops as the kid visibly recoils. “What’s your name?”

Beside him, Jinyoung takes in the kid’s features - his wide eyes and small mouth. He’s not entirely too sure the kid knows how to speak Korean.

There’s a long, uneasy silence. The kid watches them, they watch the kid.

A strong wind blows through the alley, rustling through the plastic convenience store bag Jinyoung’s still holding. A few scant raindrops splatter on his forehead.

It happens in the space of a second. One moment, they’re locked in a stalemate, and just the next, the kid is leaping forward towards Jinyoung - fingers prying the flimsy plastic handles of the grocery bag from his slack fingers.

He sidesteps a shocked Jinyoung easily, running and disappearing around the open mouth of the alley.

“Hey!” Jinyoung yells, a moment too late. But he’s already giving chase, Jaebum hot on his heels. “Come _back_ here, you little-.”

He sees him in the near distance, turning left right before the open junction that escapes this labyrinth. Jinyoung’s feet slap hard against the uneven pavement, he scratches his palm against rough brick as he takes the same turn the kid did seconds before.

The alley’s a little wider this time, with rubbish scattered every so often, and a big tip against the wall.

But -.

There’s nobody here. There’s _nothing_ here. It’s just a long alleyway with an opening right at the end, but there’s no way the kid managed to get there that fast.

Jaebum almost crashes into him, catching himself at the last minute.

“Where’d he go?” he asks, breathing heavily.

“I don’t know,” Jinyoung says, eyes scanning his surroundings. He takes a few steps forward, checking around the sides of the rubbish tip.

Jaebum crouches down to peer underneath, but the kid’s just vanished into thin air.

He exchanges a look with Jaebum.

Then, he pouts. “He took my lunch.”

Jaebum rolls his eyes.

“Young-ah, leave it,” he says, extending his arm toward him. “He probably needs it more than you do.”

“How could you say that?” Jinyoung demands, arms crossed, though he’s already walking towards Jaebum.

It’s not until they’re slipping out of the alley, Jaebum’s dependable arm wrapped tight around his shoulder, that he sees him.

He glances over his shoulder just in time to watch silently as the kid slips out of an impossibly small space. Jaebum is still talking to Jinyoung, oblivious.

The rustle of plastic is barely audible from here. When the kid looks up he catches Jinyoung’s eye, face and eyes unreadable from this distance. They watch each other, until the wall comes between them.

-

Jinyoung is still thinking about it an hour later, in Chief Constable Na Jaeha’s office, in Sabuk Police Station.

It’s a small room, two desks crammed into one space and piles and piles of printed paper in haphazard stacks.

At the other table, Jaebum is sitting close-headed to one of the younger police officers, Officer Choi Youngjae, as they pore over the preliminary findings they have.

“Officer Kim,” the constable is saying to Jinyoung, his voice swimming into his consciousness like a mist. “Kim Minseok-ssi.”

It takes him a second to realise he’s the one being spoken to.

“Yeah?” he says, a beat too late. He sits up properly, uncrossing his legs.

The constable is an older man, with deep wrinkles over his forehead and around his mouth. He looks so right and proper that Jinyoung feels a need to be on his best behaviour.

He clears his throat, repeats, more assured this time, “Yes.”

The constable is peering at him over his glasses, but his eyes seem friendly enough.

He sits heavily in the chair opposite Jinyoung, worn leather chair groaning precariously beneath him.

“Enjoying the rain?” he asks, amused. He takes off his glasses, placing them very close to, but not actually in, his open glasses case. Far too close to where a chipped mug half-filled with cold coffee sits dangerously on the edge of a stack of books.

“Enjoying, not so much,” Jinyoung answers, finally. “Does it always rain like this here?”

It’s dark and stormy outside, heavy clouds rolling down waves of ice-cold rain on to the deserted streets.

“It always rains,” the constable tells him, “But like this?”

They both look out of the window, where the furious hail and rain rattles the windows. Jinyoung can feel the chill from here.

“This is new,”  the constable says. He scratches at the back of his head. “Must be some freak storm.”

Jinyoung hums, “Must be.”

He’d checked before they headed up here. It’s been raining non-stop for weeks - a heavy, wet spot in South Korea’s otherwise dry season. “Can you tell me what happened with the Hans?”

“There’s not much to report,” the other man says. “That there,” he jerks with his chin towards the thin folder Jaebum’s got in his hands. “That’s all we got, and that’s mostly circumstantial.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did Han go to the store that morning, or to the paddies first, or just to town,” the constable says. He shrugs, sinking in further in his seat with a blustery sigh. “People saw him at this place or that place. Only from a distance or not at all, and nobody spoke to him. We can only guess what he was doing.”

Jinyoung takes this in slowly. “How about his son? Han Sunwoo?”

“School all day and then home, with his family,” the constable says, voice droning like he’s just repeating an old conversation. He notices how Jinyoung’s expression droops with disappointment. “Think there’s a connection?”

“Maybe,” he says, he’s not sure how the pieces would fit together yet. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I think we’re building a case on a circumstance,” the constable laughs, though there’s much more tiredness than humour in his voice. “It might just be an accident. Like one of those allergic reactions they talk about on the TV.”

Jinyoung’s never seen an allergic reaction like this. But he doesn’t say that.

Behind him, Jaebum scrapes back his chair, standing up to shake Officer Song’s hand. Jinyoung stands too, leaning over the desk - careful not to knock down the mug of coffee - to shake the constable’s hand too.

“Thank you for all your help,” he says.

“No need to thank me,” the other man says. “I’m just glad to get this off my shoulders. It’s all yours now.” 

Jaebum tucks in the slim file into his bag, before joining Jinyoung. Officer Choi, in a dress shirt two sizes too big for him and a wonkily pinned badge, smiles warmly at him and then wanders over to the door of the office, ready to open it for them.

Jaebum bows deep to the Chief Constable, who’s rounding the desk to grip his hand with two hands. He shakes them vigorously. 

“One more thing,” Jinyoung says, when the man turns to him. “Are all the schools open in Sabuk at the moment?”

“There’s only two,” Officer Choi pipes up from behind them. “And they’re both open. The kids should all be in school right now.”

Jinyoung exchanges a long look with Jaebum.

“There was a boy,” he says, turning so he can address both the officer and the constable. “In the alleyways over the road, he wasn’t in uniform. He was dirty and tattered, very thin. Have you seen him before?”

The constable narrows his eyes. After a long moment he speaks.

“What do you mean to say? You found a foundling?”

Jinyoung takes a deep breath at the word, feeling like he’s just eased into something he shouldn’t have. “Are there provisions, here in Sabuk, for the homeless?”

The constable’s bushy brows furrow above his narrow eyes.

“There are no foundlings in Sabuk,” he repears, exhaling a laugh before catching himself. “Don’t you think we’d know about it if there were? Where did you see him?”

“Of course,” Jinyoung rushes to explain. “But if there were. Would they have a place to go?”

The constable looks at Jinyoung carefully. The silence drags on.

“Just a few streets from here,” Jaebum says from the side, digesting the mood. He steps in closer to Jinyoung, a welcome gesture of solidarity. “In one of the alleys with a big tip. A street urchin about this tall,” he indicates at his waist, “young looking, with dark hair, very skinny.”

Bit of an asshole, Jinyoung doesn’t add. He can still feel the phantom tug of the plastic bag handles at his fingertips when the kid ran off with it. But it’s raining now, and this weather’s no good for a child.

“Wearing corduroy pants and a long-sleeved dark shirt,” he continues. “Superman. It had Superman on the front. I don’t think he speaks-, I’m not sure he’s Korean.”

The constable purses his lips, his entire face so tightly screwed up, Jinyoung could almost believe he was biting down on something sour.

From the side comes Officer Choi’s hesitant voice. “If there was a foundling, a _foreign_ child in Sabuk we’d know.” He shakes his head. “I know we rural folk don’t move as fast as you’d like, but we’re no-. Sabuk is an industrial town. Everyone works the land, and there’s plenty to go around - even when there isn’t.” He looks both Jaebum and Jinyoung in the eye in turn. “We don’t leave one of our own. Especially not a child.”

He ends abruptly, the last note of his voice almost ringing out in the silence.

“Okay,” Jaebum says first, the only one willing to break through the awkwardness. Jinyoung can tell he’s masking a lot of frustration in his voice. “We understand.”

He doesn’t say they were wrong though - that they saw or heard or understood wrong, even though the constable seems to be waiting for it.

After a strained few moments where nobody moves, the Chief Constable rounds back to his desk, glancing over at the window.

“It’s still going strong,” he says, linking his thick arms behind his back. “You folks don’t want a coffee to tide you over until it stops?”

“Thank you,” Jaebum tells him stiffly, none of the earlier warmth in his voice. “But we really have to be on our way now.”

“We’ll take an umbrella,” Jinyoung tacks on though, because the rain is aggressive. “If you happen to have one.”

-

They’re just about to leave, standing on the threshold of the harsh outside and the front office.

Jaebum is holding a big golf-style umbrella Officer Choi had dug out of a cupboard. He’d shaken off the accumulated dust before handing it over to them.

“It rains so often these days, that everyone carries their own,” he apologises, gesturing at the desks on the front-floor, each with an umbrella in a metal dustbin by the side. “We haven’t had to lend out umbrellas in a while.”

The constable places a heavy, strong hand on Jinyoung’s shoulder, addressing him directly.

“A foundling on the streets of Sabuk,” he asks. “Just over the road?”

“Yes, sir,” Jinyoung says. “He was hanging around the back alleys.”

The constable hums. "I'll find him." 

Behind them, Officer Choi shakes Jaebum’s hand. “I hope the next time we meet,” he says, “we’ll be a lot closer to figuring this thing out.”

“Me too,” Jaebum replies, and Jinyoung knows he means it too. “We’ll be on our way. Thank you.”

-

Together, Jinyoung and Jaebum walk back to the motel slowly, huddled beneath the huge golf umbrella.

Jinyoung slides his fingers over Jaebum’s cold ones, where they’re gripping the wooden handle. He adjusts his hold on it, just so that the exposed wire on the brim stops digging into his shoulder.

Under his breath, he chants a short safety incantation. The old hangul sounds clunky in his mouth. Nothing happens, not visibly anyway - it’s a very low-level incantation and Jinyoung doesn’t have an ounce of anything supernatural in him.

Jaebum cuts him a questioning glance, but he looks away. He doesn’t know how to explain it.

This rain unsettles him, how cold and harsh it is. He’d rather be safe than sorry.

“Did you find out anything helpful?” he asks Jaebum, angling for a distraction.  

Jaebum takes a moment to answer. For a second, Jinyoung thinks he’s going to call him out anyway.

“Not in the slightest,” Jaebum says. He sighs. “You?”

Jinyoung shakes his head, lips pressing together. They pass another alley, winding out into a sheet of dense rain right at the end. 

Both of them peer into it as far as they can, gait naturally slowing as they pass it, just as they have for each alley they’ve come across.

They’re both looking for the same thing, the same person, but they don’t say it. They have no need to.

-

Jinyoung needs to stretch. Or take a walk. Or do _something._ Anything other than stare at the same book as he has been for the past two days.

It’s nearing the evening now; the low distant hum of daily life outside their motel has quieted to silence.

He yawns, pushing away the book: an old bibliographical tome of the past residents in Sabuk since records began. Which isn’t very long at all, but certainly feels like it since he’s been poring over it.

Jinyoung is sitting at the small round table in their motel, Jaebum is sitting opposite him, their knees brushing.

There are ramyeon pots and sandwich wrappers scattered around them too, some have tumbled on to the floor.

Jaebum takes off his glasses, rubbing his eyes with the pads of his fingers. He sighs deeply. “Are you getting anywhere?”

Jinyoung glances at his notepad, there’s a list of hastily scribbled names and a tally of 27.

That is 27 names of people who died in Sabuk from drowning. 27 potential water gwisin.

But the tome only dates around 70 years back or so.

He doesn’t know if that number is high or normal in a town as small as Sabuk.

“I have a few names,” he says, lips pressing together. “They’re mostly children and infants though. Given the dates.”

Jaebum bites down on the inside of his lip, frowning thoughtfully. The possibility of them turning… it’s very slim, Jinyoung knows that. But he can’t escape the small doubt, the _what if_.

“What do we know so far?” Jaebum asks instead, the same doubts running through his head. He slouches further in his chair, arms folded on his belly.

“It’s involved with water, whatever it is,” Jinyoung replies. “And it’s powerful enough to make people drown.”

There’s a hesitant pause.

“But not kill them,” Jaebum observes after a moment. Then he surges forward, digging out the copy of the Hans’ medical report among their stack of files. “It says here that both their vitals are fine, they’re in a coma but that’s it. There’s seemingly no other damage done to their bodies.”

“Not _yet,”_ Jinyoung counters. “But they haven’t woken up.”

“Maybe,” Jaebum says. “But why? Vengeful gwisin don’t usually stop short of taking souls with them. Especially not water ones. So why this one?”

Jinyoung touches a tongue to his lower lip. He knows what Jaebum is trying to get at, but his heart beats harder just thinking about it.

“It would have to be powerful enough,” Jaebum continues. “Maybe even older than what we think it is.” He glances at the book Jinyoung had discarded. “That only dates back seventy years, but people died before that. Unaccounted for.”

Jinyoung feels uneasy. “If that’s true,” he says, pulling the book back closer to him. It has a dusty, leathery smell to it and he wrinkles his nose when he leans over it. “Then why only now? Why _this_ family, today. And not another family fifty years ago, thirty. And why not multiple families? Doesn’t this seem targeted?”

They’ve been looking through Sabuk town records since Jaebum used his badge to pick up some from the local government office. It’s a room really. Smelling of dried ink and with a few shelves full of old, badly bound books in an annex connecting to the post office.

Jaebum all but deflates. It doesn’t many any sense. A spirit to be so powerful, so vengeful it can stick around for hundreds of years, but only attacks once?

It just doesn’t make any sense.

Jaebum leans his elbows on the table, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose. Underneath, his thighs squeeze around Jinyoung’s.

It’s quiet for a while, comfortable. Jinyoung tries to think through, though his mind continually wanders back to the heat of Jaebum’s body.

“Maybe it’s connected to the house,” Jaebum suggests. “Sunhwa said it was old.”

Jinyoung freezes, body going stiff as he remembers the crawling feeling of something moving behind the bathroom walls at the Han house.

Jaebum watches him carefully. “What is it?”

Jinyoung’s voice fails him the first time he tries to sound it out. He clears his throat, tries again. “Inju.”

Human sacrifice. Usually, a pair buried in the foundation of a building to make it stand tall for years to come. It’s a tradition that mostly fizzled out after Silla fell. But that could mean that their ghost is near a thousand years old.

“You think that’s possible?” Jaebum asks in response to this. “I’ve never heard of spirits that old. Or anywhere near that.”

Jinyoung swallows tightly. “What if it turned into something else? Like a-. Like a demon. Can that happen?”

“I don’t know,” Jaebum murmurs. He’s thinking hard. “I’ve never seen it happen, or heard about it.”

But it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been blindsided by something they didn’t know could happen. Jinyoung’s careful not to rule it out.

He closes the book with a thud, expelling rivets of dust before it settles. Then he stands, they haven’t eaten for a while. He doesn’t want to think about this anymore.

In the bedside stand next to Jinyoung’s bed, there’s a drawer with four take-out leaflets in gaudy colours. There isn’t much variation in the menus, so he just picks the top of the bunch.

They’ll need sustenance, if they’re to keep going.

-

Later, as they’re waiting for their food. Jinyoung digs out a felt tip pen from his bag. Invisible ink.

He looks around, there’s an empty space in the near the table that will do.

Very carefully he draws out a large sigil - the very same Classical Chinese characters that are inked onto both his and Jaebum’s bodies.

If there’s a demon in town, this would capture it.

He hopes.

-

They’ve been reading for hours, hunched over this desk with poor lighting.

Jinyoung doesn’t know how much more he can take before he actually combusts. So he stands, stretched out nice and long, hoping to work out the kinks in back; Jaebum’s eyes tracking his movements.

He goes about clearing the table of all their rubbish. The small bin the motel provided is almost overflowing, they really need to remember to take it out tomorrow.

They don’t usually allow cleaners to go into their rooms, for obvious reasons, so they have to make do with what they can.

He can feel the prickle of Jaebum’s gaze on the side of his face.

Jinyoung glances over, “What?”

Jaebum’s leaning back in his chair, glasses on, legs outstretched and hands folded on his belly with a pen trapped between his fingers.

“Go to sleep,” he says. “It’s getting late. You’re tired.”

 _“You’re_ tired,” Jinyoung replies. It’s true, Jaebum has been tilting his head this way and that, smothering his warm sighs and long yawns. Even now, he blinks something lazy.

But the other man is already shaking his head, stubborn as all hell, “I can go for another few hours.”

Jinyoung has no doubt that he can. It’s the fact that he’ll wake up cranky and overtired the next day that bothers him. It’s no use trying to force a reasonable answer.

Jaebum is blinking hard behind his glasses, adjusting them so that he can read the tiny, cramped letters of his book more clearly.

Instead, Jinyoung ducks into the bathroom.

When he comes back out in his towel, in a cloud of steam and warmth, Jaebum glances over - only to do a double take, lips slack.

It does make Jinyoung feel good, he can’t help but admit. His eyes glint, a smirk pulls at the corner of his lips. His movements become slower, more deliberate. A languid stretch here, a deep groan there. He’s playing it off as unintentional but Jaebum isn’t fooled.

It isn’t too often that they do this (though, on the spectrum, it probably lands on ‘more often than not’ more often than Jinyoung would like to confront). It still sends a frisson of excitement all the way through his body.

Jaebum can’t take his eyes off of him as he prowls towards him. Slipping a leg over his waist to sit on his lap is easy, even if the round edge of the table digs into his back, it’s worth it though, for the way Jaebum’s warm hands to flutter over his skin and settle on his waist.

The air between them is humid, mouths hovering close to almost touching.

“Too tired for this?” Jinyoung asks, voice dropped to a whisper. His eyes trace the plump pink of Jaebum’s mouth. Watches as it forms words.

“Never,” Jaebum replies, just as quiet, just as reverent. “Not for this.”

Jaebum kisses him like he does everything else: deeply, thoroughly. And, not that Jinyoung would ever admit it, but each pass of the other man’s tongue against his, each bite at the corner of his lips, makes his knees weak and his toes curl.

They fall into Jaebum’s bed, the closest one to them, all tangled up in each other.

Jinyoung can’t stop kissing Jaebum for too long, capturing his lips over and over again, hands fluttering over his bare skin, pulling him closer, closer, and closer still.

Between rolling kisses and rolling hips, Jaebum asks, “Who’s topping?”

And Jinyoung can’t help but laugh breathlessly, hands around Jaebum’s neck pulling him down. “My ass would say it’s you.”

Jaebum’s hands flutter over Jinyoung’s broad chest, his stomach, over his trail, as all the way down where he’s relaxed and tender - though he can’t help the way he clenches against the other man.

Jaebum groans, the sound dissolving in Jinyoung’s mouth.

Lying out beside Jinyoung, he slides his arm beneath the small of his back. He grips at the soft skin of his thigh, spread his hand over the curve of his ass before he squeezes.

Jaebum leans in to press warm kisses over the taut line of Jinyoung’s throat.

“I’ll take care of you,” he whispers breathlessly, fingers digging into the give of soft skin. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

Jinyoung moans, back arching, legs falling open wider as Jaebum slides his fingers into him. He’s slow, but not hesitant. Pumping lube-coated fingers in and out of him in long, smooth strokes.

He kisses his way down Jinyoung’s stomach, mouth leaving a trail of warmth over his sweat-slicked skin. And then his mouth is sliding over Jinyoung’s cock.

Jinyoung bites down hard on his bottom lip, as Jaebum’s mouth works over him slowly, leaving wet trails of spit and hot breath.

He buries his fingers in Jaebum’s thick hair, deep groans stuttering from his chest, mingling with Jaebum’s muffled moans.

He tips his head back, heat prickling all over his skin. His lungs expand and contract as he arches up off the bed, fucking into Jaebum’s mouth before rolling back down on his fingers - over and again, over and again.

There’s a deep red flush on Jaebum’s cheeks, flooding into his neck and down into his chest. His dark hair is flattened on one side, standing up stick-straight from where Jinyoung holds it, and his eyes are red-rimmed and puffy from reading all day.

As Jinyoung watches him, though, with hazy eyes, he can’t help but think he’s beautiful, exhilarating.

His eyes roll back, lids closing tightly and he’s so close, _so_ close, right there on the precipice. Fingers spasm in Jaebum’s hair, voice going high and reedy.

Jaebum pulls off abruptly, just in time, so attuned to Jinyoung. Jinyoung’s stomach contracts, and he squeezes around Jaebum’s fingers, a frustrated moan tumbling from his lips.

Sitting on his haunches above him, Jaebum watches him carefully. A playful smirk pulls at his mouth as he lazily presses his fingers where Jinyoung is soft and wet.

His other hand fists through his own cock, thumb swirling over the beaded moisture of his slit. Jaebum laughs at the look on Jinyoung’s face, light and tinkling even as it hits the rough edges of his throat.

Jinyoung surges up to kiss that laugh away, pulling the other man close to him before he reaches down to grab his cock, placing it exactly where he needs him.

Their eyes are on each other as Jaebum slides into him, surrounding him, filling him up so completely. Jinyoung is breathing heavily, but he places his trembling hands on Jaebum’s waist, fingers digging in crescent shaped marks into him.

Slick heat fall through his spine as he guides Jaebum’s hips into movement. Jaebum’s low grunts mix into his, and Jinyoung closes his eyes tight.

Their foreheads smack together, breaths intermingling the tiny space between them.

Jaebum’s name falls from Jinyoung’s lips, once, twice, until it’s all he can think about. He drags his nails down the length of his arms.

Everything seems to build up at once. Jaebum fucking into him relentlessly; helpless moans falling from his slack lips, fingers digging into the thin sheets around Jinyoung’s head.

Jinyoung’s hand travels up, fingers sinking into the nape of Jaebum’s neck and he moans, so loud it almost seems to echo.

He’s wound up so tight it feels like he’s going to break - it becomes almost too much too soon, and he groans against Jaebum’s clumsy lips. Jinyoung comes undone in a rush - desperate, wanting, clinging to Jaebum to keep him as close as he possibly can.

-

It takes a while for Jinyoung to come to. He’s lying beside Jaebum on his bed, sprawled out on his back.

The stuffy air of the motel cools over his skin, makes him shiver. Something - not quite regret, but more like complication - pools low in his belly.

From the side, he can feel Jaebum’s steady gaze, hears his even breaths. But he’s not brave enough to encounter it.

He sits up at the precise moment Jaebum reaches out for him.

“Young-ah,” Jaebum says, voice rough, tired. “Where are you going?”

“To wash up,” he tries saying it warmly, lightly. But even he can tell that he misses it by a mile.

The silence drags on as Jinyoung reaches down between the beds into his duffel for a clean towel.

“Come back to bed after,” Jaebum says next.

Jinyoung hums, non-committal. He’s carefully avoiding looking at the other man as he pulls out a spare pair of pyjamas. They both know how this goes. They both know he won’t.

He slips into the temporary haven of the bathroom. He takes a shower, dresses, brushes his teeth, washes his hands.

He waits, basically, wasting his time. Until he’s sure enough time has passed that Jaebum will pretend to be asleep when Jinyoung slips back into the room.

When he does, he carefully removes the things scattered on top of his bed. He slides into the cool sheets, and he tries not to miss Jaebum’s warmth too much.

-

Jinyoung wakes up because of a strong gust of wind. He’s on his back, pushed up against the far wall of his bed; soreness is creeping up the muscles of his back.

It takes a second to re-orient himself, as it usually does. He runs a palm across his face, stubble prickling on his palm.  

Instinctively, he turns his head to look for Jaebum. He’s sleeping on his bed, sleep shirt crumpled, and turned towards Jinyoung, arm reaching over the space where he isn’t any more. His face is relaxed, mouth slack; carrying none of the usual stress.

He looks younger like this, handsome in a completely different way.

Jinyoung sighs deeply. He sleeps like a log too.

The rain outside is battering against the windows, an incessant dark scattering mass against pale moonlight and heavy winds.

The motel walls creak and groan in a way that unsettles Jinyoung. His heart beats hard, distantly scared, but he takes inventory of the dark room as a precaution.

When he sits up, it’s slow, feeling for the sheathed knife tucked beneath his pillow.

He doesn’t think about what he’s doing, instead, he works on autopilot. He quietly unzips his bag, pulls a pair of sturdier track pants over his pyjama bottoms, and takes his heavy duty raincoat from the stand.

After a moment of hesitation, he takes the NIS down-jacket and hat he and Jaebum had stolen a few years back too.

He makes sure his knife is secure; phone, flashlight and wallet in his pocket. He grabs the Sabuk police umbrella and puts on his shoes.

Then, he glances briefly at Jaebum, breathing evenly and steadily on his bed, and he’s out of the door.

-

Sabuk is creepy.

That’s true during the day, but even more so during the night. It’s not even that late. Just about to turn midnight. But the entire place is empty. The tarmac is almost sticky with rain, the air frigid as Jinyoung takes quick hurried steps.

There’s a lone shop, smaller even than Yugyeom’s convenience store, that’s open. Jinyoung walks past the dense green bottles of soju on display, heading towards the food section.

He grabs as many varieties and types as he can fit in his hands. A vitamin drink, a ham and cheese wrap, a discounted pot of fruit, a carton of choco-milk. He dumps it in front of the cashier, a young boy with pockmarked cheeks and tired eyes.

Jinyoung’s eyes wander as the machine beeps through each product. There’s a special promotion over by the side: cheap plastic toothbrushes bundled up into a box. They have cartoon decals on them, although some are already fading, and a clear plastic covering over the bristles.

“-that everything?” Jinyoung hears.

It’s the cashier, looking both bored and somehow expectant.

He switches the NIS jacket to the crook of his other arm and rummages through the box. There’s a purple toothbrush with two seals intertwining on the handle. Jinyoung drops it on the counter with a clutter, taking out his wallet too.

Before long, he’s back on the cold streets of Sabuk. The streetlights are on but they’re a dull, faded yellow not providing much illumination.

It’s still raining, though a lot less now, and at least the winds have settled. Jinyoung pulls his jacket tighter around himself, wishing he’d thought to bring a scarf. The cold at the base of his throat and on his hands is what reminds him to keep him going.

He wanders for a long time. At least two hours pass. His flashlight makes the shadows of the back alleys of Sabuk grow long and spindly.

Jinyoung’s teeth are chattering, shoulders hunched up close to his neck to preserve heat.

He’s about to give up, turn back and head towards the warmth of the motel. To Jaebum.

There’s a cardboard box in an awning. It’s large, two separate ones wedged together. The top is sagging at the seam, soaked with rainwater.

Jinyoung has walked this particular alleyway two or three times by now, not giving it much more than a cursory glance.

He stands in front of it now, flashlight aimed at it - waiting. Then, he hears it again, an unmistakable, quiet whine. This time accompanied by movement that threatens to topple the cardboard structure over.

He closes his umbrella. Carefully, he pulls apart the front flap. A thickly knitted cloth flops over where it was bunched up against the flap.

The child from days ago is curled up as far as he can go against the cardboard, face all scrunched up against the bright light of Jinyoung’s flashlight.

Jinyoung sighs.

He gets down on his haunches, and sets the light in his pocket so that’s it’s not shining directly into the kid’s face. He places the plastic bag down too.

They stare at each other. The boy’s eyes wide and scared.

“Come out,” Jinyoung says, he extends a hand. “It’s cold.”

The boy looks at his hand, before his gaze trails up. But he doesn’t move.

“It’s not safe here,” Jinyoung says next, though his hand wavers, falls away. “Come with me.”

The boy deliberates, mouth pressing together. But then he seems to have made up his mind.

“I don’t know you,” he mutters. His voice is serious, just a hint of an accent, trembling as he shivers. “Don’t go with strangers.”

Jinyoung smiles a little, at least the kid still has some sense of self-preservation.

“Good, you shouldn’t,” he replies, reaching into one of the deep pockets of his overcoat. He offers him the badge. “I’m not just any stranger though. I’m a police officer.”

Distantly, he does feel bad for lying. He tampens it down, staying still as the kid reaches forward, small fingers quick to take the wallet.

Jinyoung watches him open it. The boy squints, taking in the badge, fingers feeling it over, and then the ID card on the other side. When he’s had his fill, he closes it carefully. But he still holds on to it.

His hand can’t reach around the width of it, fingers splayed.

“Police can still be not good,” the kid says. He stares at Jinyoung, defiant.

He’s pretty ballsy, for a ten year old.

Jinyoung takes a deep breath, letting it out through his nose.

“True,” he admits. He doesn’t much like the police either. “But I-. I can’t leave you here.” He squints up at the sky - there are still heavy clouds but it’s stopped raining now. “It’s too cold.”

“I don’t want to,” the kid frowns. “Maybe you’ll hurt me. I’m not going with you.”

Jinyoung bites down on his lip. He’s not going to argue with him. And he’s certainly not going to force a child to go with him.

“Okay," he concedes, even though it annoys him. He thrusts the NIS jacket he had over his arm forward. “Here, put this on. It’ll keep you warm.”

The kid hesitates. But the promise of warmth is too tempting. He crawls forward, blanket falling away, getting out his alcove to stand in front Jinyoung.

Behind him, where he was lying, is just a small rucksack, a teddy bear leg hanging out of it, and the plastic bag he’d stolen days ago.

He stays still, allowing Jinyoung to dress him in the jacket, zipping it up all the way to the top. It’s obviously too big for him, hanging down somewhere near his knees. He takes back his wallet.

“What’s your name, kid?”

He makes it sound casual, offhand. He regrets not bringing a scarf, there’s too much of a gap between the top of the zipper and the kid’s thin neck.

The boy looks at Jinyoung, caution back in his eyes.

“Bambam,” he says after a second of hesitation, slow and careful.

Jinyoung’s brows lift at the foreign name. But he doesn’t say anything.

The kid’s eyes shift from Jinyoung to the dark alley, and then back again. “Are you gonna arrest me?”

Jinyoung exhales on a laugh, though he smothers it quick when he sees the expression in kid’s eyes shutter, his mouth going tight.

“Why would I do that?” he asks instead, bending down to retrieve the NIS hat he’d stuffed in the plastic bag. The kid’s eyes follow his movements.

Jinyoung puts the cap on the boy’s head firmly, it’s not much, but it should protect him from the rain a little. Bambam’s hand don’t reach the end of the jacket sleeves. Instead, they flop over each other as he feels out the cap with his hands.

“I took your things.”

“So you do remember,” he says levelling him with a wry gaze. “Was it delicious, at least?”

Bambam looks guilty, but he doesn’t say anything more on the subject. He pushes up the jacket sleeves up to reveal his hands.

“I brought you this,” Jinyoung says instead, passing him the plastic bag with a loud rustle. The kid looks into it eagerly, eyes cataloguing everything.

Jinyoung purses his lips, there’s a lot of sugar in there. “Don’t eat it all at once.”

He waits until the kid’s done rummaging through the bag. Then he takes a deep breath and says, “I can’t let you stay here.”

The kid’s face darkens, defences shooting all the way back up. “I’m not going. I said I wasn’t!”

“I can’t,” Jinyoung counters. It’s too dangerous. “I’ll take you to the police station, instead. But you can’t stay here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bambam says, his fingers tighten on the handles of the plastic bag - anxious. “You can’t make me. You can’t make me do anything-”

“Okay,” Jinyoung says, cutting him off. His voice is a little too loud and sharp, it makes the kid recoil. So gentler this time, he repeats, “Okay. Then stay here. I’ll go to the station, and I’ll let them know you’re here. They’ll take you somewhere safe.”

The kid backs away, bumping into the makeshift cardboard box behind him.

“No,” he frowns hard, mouth pressed tight together. “I’m not doing that.”

His accent seemingly comes out thicker the angrier he gets. Jinyoung wonders how a child like him ended up all the way here, in Sabuk.

But, for now, he doesn’t care. It’s cold, getting colder - and the air is bristling like it’s gearing up for rain. Jinyoung needs to head back to the motel. It’s been hours, and he needs to get back before Jaebum wakes up.

He’s tired and annoyed, and he’s not up to arguing with a child tonight.

So, although he has a feeling he’s going to regret this later, Jinyoung surges forward - side stepping the kid to snatch the rucksack and blanket from inside the cardboard box.

Bambam startles, yelling out, even as Jinyoung reaches in for the sole plastic bag left in there.

“What are you doing?” the kid yells, voice high and reedy. “That’s _mine._ You can’t-. You can’t-”

But Jinyoung’s already walking away, hand full of looted goods held high as the kid tugs and pulls at him. He kicks and punches at Jinyoung, even though he doesn’t do it with much force, tears of frustration beading at his lashes.

Jinyoung doesn’t even think he really notices that they are steadily making their way out of alleyway.

He’s trying to keep his balance against the kid’s weight, trying to navigate their way to the station. He drops the flashlight, and it rolls under some debris that has been pushed to the side.

Bambam’s fists digging into the soft padding of Jinyoung’s coat quickly becomes an unsteady rhythm, so frequent that it feels strange the moment it stops.

Still, Jinyoung walks a few paces more before he realises that the kid is not beside him anymore. He casts a panicked look back, and Bambam is standing stock still in the middle of the alley, eyes blank.

Coldness rips up Jinyoung’s spine. He stares for just a moment, and then he walks towards him slowly.

He can’t see his face very clearly, with the flashlight left far behind and the watery moonlight obscured behind thick clouds. But Jinyoung can almost taste his fear.

Bambam’s shoulders are bunched up to his ears, fingers gripping at each other.

“What’s wrong?” Jinyoung asks as soon as he’s close enough.

The kid bites down on his lip. “There’s a noise,” he says. “I don’t like it.”

“What noise?” Jinyoung says, he lifts a beckoning hand. He tries to make his voice offhand, not wanting to scare him anymore. “Can you describe it?”

Bambam eyes his hand warily, looking around himself first before he takes a few hesitant steps forward. He looks spooked, but relaxes as soon as Jinyoung grips his shoulder and brings him close.

It’s almost immediately after Jinyoung has Bambam close - the sound. The same one from days earlier. From the eerie bathroom walls of the Hans.

The scrape of sound behind a wall, an almost waterlogged density that gives rise to goosebumps all over Jinyoung’s skin.

Bambam startles, small body going stiff under a too-big jacket.

Jinyoung brings him in closer, peering around. There’s nothing but walls and rubbish here - and water pipes. They crawl up the length of coal-stained bricks like black masses, melding into each other at the top to form thick, warped gutters.

Jinyoung changes his mind. Instead of the station, where he’d been going originally. He’ll take the kid back to the motel, where he and Jaebum can keep him safe.

He hands Bambam his things - letting him put on his rucksack and hold the plastic bag. The kid doesn’t try to make a run for it, which Jinyoung thought he might.

He grips his small, cold hand tightly and they make their way back to the motel slowly, carefully.

The sound follows them; insinuating itself in wall to wall - tracking them.

Bambam digs half-moon crescents into the back of Jinyoung’s hand. He gulps down teary breaths, feet working fast to keep up with him.

“You’re gonna stay with me for tonight, okay?” Jinyoung says, glancing down at him.

The kid nods, though Jinyoung’s sure he’s not even listening properly. His head twists with fear with each gurgle of sound that emanates from the walls, each whisper that lingers in the cold air and seems to vibrate under their footsteps.

Jinyoung holds the kid’s hand tight on one side, and the Sabuk police umbrella in the other hand. He’s hyper aware of the knife tucked into his waistband, trying to figure out the quickest way to grab it and unsheath it if he needs to protect them.

As they approach the exit to the maze of alleyways, the clouds darken, swelling with rain before water cascades down into the air - a waterfall, Jinyoung can feel its sheer coldness from here. It’s not heavy, and it doesn’t quite reach the ground. More like mist than anything tangible.

They stop. Beside them, the water pipes pulse with noise. Jinyoung takes a deep breath, absently running his thumb over the back of the kid’s trembling hand in comfort. They’re so close he can see the faint outline of the motel from here.

He shakes the kid’s hand off. Before he even has the chance to instruct him further, Bambam clings to him, fingers clutching Jinyoung jacket, his belongings trapped between them.

Jinyoung pats his head awkwardly - he’s not sure how else you’re supposed to comfort scared children.

“You okay?” he asks.

“No,” is the sullen, high-toned reply.

Fair enough, Jinyoung thinks.

With the hand closest to the kid he opens up the umbrella. In the other he holds the knife he’d retrieved from his pocket; unsheathed now, glinting dangerously in the low light.

“Stay close, okay? Don’t let the rain touch you.”

“Okay,” Bambam replies. His voice is quiet, wobbly - lacking the brazenness from before. He reaches up to cling at Jinyoung, fingertips scrambling until they tuck into the sleeve of Jinyoung’s jacket, knuckles brushing against his wrist.

For the second time, in a period much too short for Jinyoung’s liking, he breathes out a brief incantation for safe passage.

A frisson of electricity runs through Jinyoung - a touch too hot, delicate and dense all at once. The umbrella shimmers with the tiniest suggestion of movement, a barely there vibration of light. It starts from the tips of Jinyoung’s fingers, leaking into the handle of the umbrella, snaking up every nook and cranny to create an invisible barrier of protection.

It’s undeniably, _unequivocally_ magic. And it shouldn’t have happened.

This is not how these things work. Jinyoung almost drops the umbrella, shocked.

He can feel the energy around him, gearing up, breathing - like a living thing. And then he’s hyper aware that the sound from the walls have stopped.

Silence. Other than the tranquil rain.

Still though. Jinyoung can’t shake off the feeling that they’re being watched. Tracked.

A small hand tugs on his sleeve.

Jinyoung glances down, catching Bambam’s eye. His breath stops.

“Are we going?” the kid asks. “I don’t like it here.”

It takes Jinyoung a second to answer, but then he nods his head.

“Yes,” he says, heart thudding against his ribcage. He feels like he’s out of breath. “Yeah, let’s go.”

He leads them forward, misting rain bouncing off of the umbrella.

Jinyoung peers into Bambam’s face again: his too skinny cheeks, his small mouth and large eyes. He looks carefully. There are no remnants shimmering saffron in the kid’s eyes anymore - a purity of light chasing its own tail.

Must have been a trick of the light, Jinyoung decides. Nothing more than that.

-

They get to the motel safely.

Bambam drags his feet up the outside stairs, glancing back every now and again.

Jinyoung unlocks the motel door quickly and ushers him in, turning on the overhead light.

The room is quiet, neat, Jaebum is pretending to be asleep.

Bambam clings to the furthest wall, taking everything in with wide eyes as he clutches his things.

He’s resistant to letting go of his backpack, rubbing his cheek on the fuzzy teddy bear leg still sticking out. He doesn’t drop the plastic bag either, but Jinyoung eventually gets him to sit at the table.

He compromises, letting the kid keep his blanket and bag on his lap. Instead, Jinyoung clears a small space on the table with the back of his arm.

The rustle of the plastic bag is loud. Jinyoung digs right to the bottom of it to find the packaged sandwich he’d bought. He rips it open and hands it to the kid.

“You eat spam?” he asks, diving back into the bag for a juicebox.

Bambam nods, still wearing the NIS jacket and hat. He shuffles forward in his seat, legs dangling over it, not quite reaching the floor.

The kid eats ravenously - bites of food almost too big for him. Jinyoung wants to tell him to slow down (because, quite frankly, it’s a little disgusting to see) but he hesitates. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s eaten.

Earlier, he’d tucked the extra plastic bag (that had been stolen from him) into the other one. There’s something tight, almost overwhelming, in his chest when he looks inside to find one of the rice balls from the other day, still in its packet, intact but for a few small bites.

Jinyoung sighs quietly to himself. His eyes wander past the kid on the table, finding Jaebum’s open eyes taking him in.

Their eyes meet with so much unspoken. The loudest question of all is “Is this the right thing?”

Jinyoung stands on the other side of the table, pyjama pants soaked through with rainwater at the bottom. He’s still in his overcoat and the wind is howling outside.

He think about what he saw in the kid’s eyes earlier. It’s risky, and he might be putting Jaebum and himself in danger.

There’s something that draws him to the kid though - whether it’s a sense of misguided care or just morbid curiosity he doesn’t know.

What he does know is that he’s here now, so he has to deal with it.

As soon as the kid’s done eating, Jinyoung herds him into the bed he’d left hours ago.

The sheets are cool now, but Bambam hurries into it. His sheer contentment at the warmth and comfort of the bed seems to have overridden any of his prior self-preservations.

It worries Jinyoung though, that he’s so easily taken in. But then again, he thinks wryly as he tucks in the kid, this might all be a trap - so who knows?

The tiredness of the day catches up to him, and he stumbles towards Jaebum’s bed. He turns off the light, strips down to his boxers and pyjama shirt, crawling into the warmth beside Jaebum.

They adjust to each other quickly, naturally. Jaebum manoeuvres himself so that he can lay his head on Jinyoung’s shoulder, arm curling over the small dip of his waist.

On the other side of the room, Bambam sniffles and moves, but it doesn’t take long until he settles; falling into sleep almost abruptly.

Jaebum adjusts himself, cheek rubbing into Jinyoung’s clavicle.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asks Jinyoung. His voice is slow and calm with sleepiness.

“What was I supposed to do?” Jinyoung replies, he can’t help the defensiveness in his voice. “Leave him there to freeze?”

Jaebum hums, not saying anymore. He squeezes Jinyoung lightly, slipping his legs between his.

He falls asleep soon too. But Jinyoung stays awake, determined to stake out the night.

Beneath Jaebum’s pillow, he can feel the outline of Nora, his favourite pistol. It’s not much, but Jinyoung feels safer.

The sky outside is getting lighter, streaming weakly into the room. Jinyoung cards his fingers through Jaebum’s hair absentmindedly, eyes on the small curled-up lump in what was supposed to be his bed.

As time passes, and the wind outside isn’t so heavy anymore, each of Jinyoung’s blinks grow stickier and stickier with sleep. It pulls him in, and then, before he knows it - he’s already asleep.

-

The first time Jinyoung wakes up it’s because of rustling.

It’s very early, probably not much past dawn. The rain outside is a gentle familiarity.

Jinyoung’s on his side, Jaebum’s heavy arm around his waist and the other man is fast asleep.

His hand is already inching towards Jaebum’s pistol under the pillow, pure instinct.

He opens his eyes slowly, assessing the room. If he tilts his head just a little bit, through his barely slitted eyes he can see the kid, Bambam, standing by the motel room table.

At first Jinyoung can’t see what he’s doing, but it’s clear that the rustling sound is the plastic convenience store bag strapped around his wrist.

But then he turns slightly, with the movement of his actions, and Jinyoung clearly sees his wallet (the real one) tucked into the kid’s palm.

Bambam is leisurely with it, checking each leather flap before taking out the fat wad of ₩10,000 notes Jinyoung keeps in there for emergencies.

He folds it in his hand, throwing the leather wallet on to the table as he goes to put the stolen money into his pocket.

The leather hits wood with a dull slap and slide. Cautious of the noise, the kid instinctively turns to where Jaebum and Jinyoung are supposed to be passed out.

He startles, when he meets the ire in Jinyoung’s eyes.

For a moment, dense silence prevails.

Jinyoung grits his teeth at the surge of anger that flows through him. “What are you doing?” he demands.

He can hear the kid’s stuttered breathing from where he lays. But the boy doesn’t say anything, small shoulders hunched as he takes tiny, terrified steps towards the door.

“You’re stealing from me?” Jinyoung says, louder, struggling his way to an upright position. Beside him, Jaebum begins to stir.

The kid’s back hits the motel room door. It’s not even about the money, for Jinyoung, it’s the principle of it - his help being thrown back in his face. He’s half asleep, tired, with low-pooled vexation bubbling in his stomach, you won’t catch _him_ helping out another soul again.

“Take it then,” he snaps in frustration, barely cognisant of the way the boy jumps and scrambles at the handle of the door. Jaebum startles upright. “Go!”

He snatches the thin duvet, warmed from his and Jaebum’s bodies, and tugs it over his head - slamming down on the bed and shuts his eyes tightly.

From this warmth, Jinyoung hears the static open drag of the motel room door, feels the weight of Jaebum’s body lifting from the bed.

Jinyoung stubbornly keeps his eyes closed, breathing hard and heavy. The room is silent but full of frayed tension. Despite it all, or maybe even _because_ of it, it doesn’t take Jinyoung long at all to fall back into a deep, fitful, sleep.

Just as the sunlight pierces through the dull clouds and the cold rain simmers to a stop.

-

The second time Jinyoung wakes up, hours later, he’s disorientated.

He lies on his back, staring dully at the stained ceiling. He blinks slowly, eyes still sticky with sleep.

There’s no rain.

The realisation pops into his mind clearly. He glances at outside the window, he can only see trees and the grey exterior of another building, but he can see out of it clearly - no raindrops.

Instead, there’s another sound: eating.

He glances over to the table.

Jaebum has some of the research books they’d gathered surrounding him, open at an angle - leaning against the stack of books so that it’s somewhat upright.

He’s drinking orange juice from a glass, eyes scanning the text in the book.

On his other side though, is the kid - legs dangling in the inches of air between his feet and the floor. He too has glass of juice, but he’s also diligently making his way through a small bowl of plain white rice and, what looks like, store-bought rolled omelet slices.

In front of him, near the edge of the table, is Jinyoung’s wallet. The money he’d stolen earlier tucked neatly beneath it.

Jinyoung sits up, sheets pooling at his waist, and it draws the attention of the others in the room.

Jaebum barely glances at him before going back to his book.

On the other side of the table, Bambam’s legs stop swinging, he stops chewing, big eyes somewhere around Jinyoung’s chin - a mix of trepidation and guilt.

Jinyoung takes a deep breath, letting it out harshly before he climbs out of bed. Maybe he flicks the light of the tiny bathroom too harshly, and maybe he closes the door a little too loudly, but he feels like he can breathe a little easier alone.

Though, of course, he’s not alone for long.

He’s staring at the cheap purple toothbrush that’s in the holder, next to his and Jaebum’s, when the door clicks and opens.

Jaebum enters, closing the door behind him. Through the dingy little mirror, they regard each other.

The meaning in Jaebum’s eyes is easy to parse out. It’s a question and an answer all rolled up into a neat expression of concern.

Jinyoung just sighs, twisting the tap before grabbing his toothbrush.

The water splutters twice against the sink before there’s a steady stream of warming water.

Jinyoung squeezes out a dollop of toothpaste, dunks the bristles of his brush under the tap and goes on to brush his teeth.

“Are you going to just stand there?” he asks Jaebum moments later, mouth full of minty foam.

“I’m waiting for you to finish,” Jaebum replies, measured. He’s wearing day clothes now, another stiff dress shirt and smart pants. “There’s a lot we need to talk about.”

“Better talk quick,” Jinyoung mumbles irritably - more to himself than anything else. He spits into the sink. “Wouldn’t want him to take off with our stuff again.”

Jaebum, predictably, doesn’t reply. Jinyoung just rolls his eyes and finishes brushing his teeth. He splashes cold water on his face, turns off the tap firmly and pats his face dry with a towel before he finally turns to the other man.

He crosses his ankles and his arms, leaning back against the sink. The wet tips of his hair, collateral from his rushed face wash, stick to his forehead.

“What?” he says, just to watch Jaebum’s eye twitch at the dismissive tone. “What do you want?”

Instead of rising to the bait, Jaebum rubs both his palms over his face.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what we talked about before, the inju,” he replies.

Jinyoung’s brow quirk. He had expected Jaebum to talk about the kid, they need to have a conversation about that still. As always though, Jinyoung can’t quite keep up with him. His defensiveness backs down; stance relaxing.

“Okay,” he says. “Thinking what?”

The bathroom is not very big at all and two grown adults in here makes it feel positively cramped. But Jinyoung doesn’t mind when Jaebum comes to stand beside him, sliding his phone from his pocket.

On the screen is the familiar interface of a hunter forum hidden deep in the web.

There’s a short entry on inju, just a few choppy sentences:

_Ritualistic human sacrifice, Silla, turn of the millenium. Bodies in walls, for court buildings. Discontinued. One case found, no activity._

Jinyoung’s eyes keep tracing over the last sentence. One case found, no activity. One case found, no activity. Once case found. No activity.

He clicks the link. It opens to a Korean Herald news page detailing how archaeologists found a pair of skeletons buried in the foundations of the west walls of Wolseong Palace.

But no hunter has come across a creature or a spirit derived from this. Which suggests … well, with the amount of Silla palaces in Korea, they should be crawling with inju gwisin by now if they really do exist.

“What does this mean?” he asks Jaebum, their shoulders touching. “It doesn’t mention water.”

“Exactly,” Jaebum says, taking his phone back. They stand by side in the bathroom, backs against the sink. He switches over to another tab. “I spoke to Mark-”

 _“What?”_ Jinyoung interrupts, affronted. He’s been wanting to speak to Mark for weeks. He’s been MIA since he and Jackson disappeared to Europe after their latest hunt. “When?”

“This morning,” Jaebum says, scrolling though the webpage. “When you were busy sulking.”

“I wasn’t sulking,” Jinyoung says petulantly. “He stole from me. _Again._ He’s a thief.”

“Look at this,” Jaebum says, ignoring him. The webpage is one of those silly mythology sites, made by teenagers with too much time on their hands and no knowledge of what beyond the darkness.

There’s a picture of a female figure with long, dark hair suspended around her face.

“Hala?” Jinyoung sounds out, mouth awkward over the Western letters.

Jaebum hums, “European demons. Mark said he and Jackson met a hunter who’s just dealt with one. It’s a demon that targets farmland. It possess people, and,” Jaebum catches his eye, lowers his voice, “it affects weather - rain storms, thunderstorms, that kind of thing.”

Jinyoung’s breath catches. He thinks about the rain in Sabuk, how cold, how aggressive it is.

He licks his lips, “You think that’s one of those? Here?”

They look at each other. It’s an awfully long way for a demon to come.

Jaebum deliberates, rubbing his fingers over his smooth jaw. “I’m not sure. Do you think it’s possible?”

“Anything’s possible,” Jinyoung says. Because it is. They haven’t even scratched the surface of the crazy in their encounters with the supernatural. “The question is why. Why would it be here?”

“It’s an agricultural town.”

“Of five thousand people in the middle of nowhere,” Jinyoung says, scanning through the webpage. “Not exactly a prime tourist spot for a demon.”

“It could have been summoned,” Jaebum counters.

“Accidentally?” Jinyoung shivers. He can’t imagine anyone wanting to summon a crop-destroying, child-eating demon to come save their crops.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Jaebum says. He presses his lips together. “But if it is a demon. It could have just hopped through vessels until it got here.”

“Sabuk is a complete ghost town,” Jinyoung argues. “Nobody leaves here, and nobody comes in unless you’re _us,_ or, or-”

He stops abruptly, heart kicking up a notch. Very, very suddenly he remembers the kid’s eyes yesterday, a deep gold ring of light chasing its own tail.

The memory of it is hazy though, like it’s a memory buried under layers and layers of forgetfulness. Jinyoung has no idea how he thought to bring the kid back was a good idea after he saw that.

Jaebum’s weighted gaze is on him. “What’s wrong?”

Jinyoung’s mouth feels dry. His heart is a staccato rhythm. “His eyes. Yesterday. They were-. They were gold.”

“The kid?” Jaebum says, then he catches himself. Speaks lower. “Fully?”

In a demonic possession, a vessel’s eyes can turn into a misty, inky, black: deep, soulless.

“No,” Jinyoung says. He hardly knows how to describe it. It was brilliant, clear - but it looked natural too, like it was coming from within. “It was like-”

There’s a heavy thud. Followed by three lighter ones.

At first Jinyoung thinks it’s coming from the walls, but Jaebum, closer to the sound, turns towards the door and Jinyoung’s blood runs cold.

Jaebum presses his finger against his lips, free hand reaching out to his pocket to grab a knife.

It’s a small thing, sharp as all hell and forged in blessed waters. It’s not enough to kill a demon, but it’s enough to hurt it. That should give them some time at least.

Jinyoung falls in behind Jaebum, and he opens the door slowly.

He can see into the open space of the motel room from here.

Bambam is standing by the table, clutching the heavy book that Jaebum was reading to his chest as he struggles to put it back into place.

When he sees the two adults he gasps, dropping it. It falls with a heavy thud on top of the other books on the floor, barely missing his bare toes.

“It fell,” the kid says immediately. His hands shoot behind his back, twitching, and there’s an anxious pinch between his brows. His eyes slide from Jaebum to Jinyoung before they jerk back again. “I didn’t touch it.”

Jaebum goes to advance, but Jinyoung grabs the wrist closest to him. He’s careful of the knife in his grip.

Jinyoung presses the pad of his thumb to the soft skin of Jaebum’s wrist. And then again, shorter this time.

Follow my lead, he says. An instruction without words.

He puts on a big show of sighing, circling around Jaebum so he can pick the books up from the floor.

“I didn’t touch it,” Bambam repeats, sullen. His chin is on his chest, glancing up at Jinyoung under long lashes. “It fell by itself.”

He looks like a child for all intents and purposes: too skinny, too small, with a small mouth pursed tightly. But Jinyoung’s been in this life too long to be completely convinced that anything that _looks_ cute and innocent, is always cute and innocent.

“Go get me that bag,” he says to him now, pointing over at where he’d stuffed some plastic bags in his open, messy suitcase. He expects the kid to argue, but no less than one stern look later, he’s trundling over to the suitcase.

Jinyoung watches him carefully. As does Jaebum.

He’s sure that Jaebum feels it too, the frisson of electric magic - barely there, simmering in the air - as soon as the kid enters the large sigil Jinyoung had drawn on the floor.

He can see it too, just for a second - an infinitesimal golden shimmer of light threading itself through every character of it.

The kid doesn’t seem to notice, crouching down on his haunches to pull one of the bags from the inside compartment of Jinyoung’s suitcase.

When he’s got it, he stands and heads back to Jinyoung - walking easily over the characters.

Jinyoung holds his breath, and-.

Nothing happens.

The kid walks right up to him, unfazed and untrapped by the sigil. He offers Jinyoung the bag, blinking twice - a trace of gold in his eyes.

Hesitantly, Jinyoung takes it, crushing the thin plastic between his fingers. He doesn’t really know where to go from here, really.

The kid is clearly not possessed with a demon. He’s _something_. But what?

Jinyoung glances at Jaebum, who’s already staring into Bambam’s face.

His expression is shuttered, mouth tight as he thinks long and hard.

With nothing else left to do, Jinyoung kneels to pick up the books. Bambam’s clumsy hands soon join him though Jinyoung is quick to bat them away.

“I just wanted to read it,” he mumbles. He’s not looking at Jinyoung, chin on his knee. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

Oh, but Jinyoung’s way past mad. He’s careened all the way into growing desperation.

He stands, dropping the stack of books on the table hard enough to shake the base.

Pushing aside things on the table, he finds an uncapped black felt-tip pen underneath the open flap of a meteorological annual review from 1957.

Jinyoung extends his hand, quirking his fingers in signal.

Bambam looks at him blankly, completely confused. Then, he looks at Jaebum.

“Give him your hand,” comes Jaebum’s gentle voice from behind him.  

The kid seems to trust Jaebum more implicitly than he does Jinyoung. Not that Jinyoung is jealous.

His wrist is small and delicate in Jinyoung’s grip. The pen is thin, it tickles his skin.

“Stay still,” Jinyoung warns, but there’s no heat in his words.

The kid tries his best, but he still squirms as Jinyoung carefully draws the Chinese characters of the sigil. Just because he’s not possessed now doesn’t mean he might not be later.

Behind them, Jaebum’s in the small kitchenette that forms a corner of their room. It’s nothing much more than a microwave, a kettle, and a rice cooker but it’ll do them well.

He warms up the rice for the banchan as Bambam inspects the curious markings on his tanned skin.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Don’t touch it,” Jinyoung responds. He caps off the pen and sticks it in his pocket, picking up the kid’s discarded bowl of rice to take to the microwave. “It’s protection.”

“I don’t like it,” Bambam says. He picks at the skin around the markings, but otherwise does as he’s told.

“You don’t have to like it,” Jinyoung says to him. “Sit.”

He walks over to Jaebum, stopping dead in his tracks when he sees something in the corner of his eye in the bathroom.

Something quick, dark. Maybe the illusion of hair, the movement of fabric?

Jinyoung peers into it. Nothing moves.

Jaebum, so attuned to him, is by his side in seconds - hand squeezing Jinyoung’s hip. “What’s wrong?”

He watches Jinyoung with care, his heat surrounding him.

“I thought I saw something,” he jerks his chin. “In there.”

Jinyoung places the bowl down. With one last glance at the kid, trailing the pads of his fingers over the frayed spines of the books on the table, Jinyoung follows Jaebum into the bathroom.

It’s empty. But there’s the eerie aftertaste of a missed connection.

The tap is running a steady stream of water into the sink, despite Jinyoung knowing he closed it earlier. He _knows_ he did - he can still feel the phantom metal coldness of the ridges of the tap when he turned it.

Jaebum is to the side, face close to the wall.

When Jinyoung approaches to turn off the tap, the metallic zing of each turn sends a shiver of unease up his spine. From here, he can see what the other man is looking at.

It’s water. On the wall. It’s all wet - dampness across this entire section of wall; condensation clinging and dripping across tile. Like they’ve just finished a steaming shower - but it’s just this bit. Everywhere else is bone dry.

He catches Jaebum’s eye. It seems the hunt has come to them.

-

It feels weird going to sleep next to Jaebum.

It feels even weirder waking up next to him.

It’s been almost a week since the morning at the motel. Since then, they’ve moved motels.

The bed here, in sturdy building further south of Sabuk, is a lot lumpier, almost uncomfortable, with thin pillows.

Jinyoung’s on his side again, Jaebum’s warm hand laid flat over the soft skin of his belly, nose buried in Jinyoung’s nape.

On the other side of the room is Bambam, fast asleep and sprawled on his back, mouth hanging open, in a pair of cheap pyjamas Jaebum had bought at the local store.

The small settee, the supposed third bed for this dingy little room, is stacked with their things. Bambam had made a beeline for the corner double bed as soon as they had checked in. And Jinyoung’s not so heartless to kick him out of a warm, comfortable space just so that he doesn’t have to confront the mess of feelings that’s always associated with being this close and wrapped up in Jaebum.

The room is quiet, it’s dark still, and the rain outside continues on. It feels weirdly domestic, in this cocoon of quiet and warmth. Especially as Jinyoung rubs his thumb over the back of Jaebum’s hand - absentmindedly, that is, until he notices.

It’s a type of comfortable domesticity that Jinyoung hasn’t experienced since his parents passed away, years ago now. He sighs, shaking his head from the thoughts.

Jinyoung pulls off the other man’s arm and stands, knees wobbly. He pads over to the bathroom and switches on the bathroom lights. He takes a moment though, to glance around the door jamb to the two sleeping figures on the beds.

Bambam’s face is slack and youthful, far cleaner than when they’d first met. Jaebum’s hand is in the warm spot Jinyoung left behind, mouth open, drooling a little at the corner.

Jinyoung rolls his eyes and heads in the bathroom. They have work to do.

-

In the almost week that Jinyoung has known the kid he knows him only as taciturn or clingy. More clingy than taciturn. More with Jaebum than with Jinyoung.

Jaebum is, seemingly, Bambam’s own personal hanging zoo. Surprisingly though, Jaebum … just lets him. Jinyoung had no idea he was this docile with children - he’d always been led to believe that they had the same mild aversion to them.

Instead, in the times Bambam hesitantly approaches him, sidling between his knees, Jaebum only pulls him closer, and the boy relaxes completely, small smile present in his otherwise serious face.

Jinyoung finally found the sigil amulet in the back of the car, hidden beneath a shotgun, in the crevice of the foam board. So he hangs it around the kid’s neck.

He wears it easily. He’s also dipped his fingers into, unbeknownst to him, blessed water. And Jinyoung has muttered the expulsion incantation under his breath while he slept. So Bambam is definitely _not_ a demon.

They still don’t know _what_ he is though. That’s the problem. Jaebum has some ideas, Jinyoung is sure about it, he just isn’t sharing. He prefers to have all his facts lined up in a row before speaking in most cases.

But at least Jinyoung can be somewhat sure that the kid isn’t murderous. Yet.

Now, he’s strapped in at the back seat of the car, small hands gathered around the warmth of his to-go cup from the coffee shop.

At the moment, there’s nothing they can do but keep him with them. Especially now that they might be being tracked by whatever this thing is.

“What’s that?” Bambam asks, straining against his seatbelt to get a closer look at Jinyoung’s tablet. It’s all about Hali, everything that’s known about them.

Jinyoung tilts the screen away, keeping grotesque faces and dirt-caked, gruesome claws away from little eyes. He doesn’t know much about children admittedly, but he knows that you shouldn’t give them nightmares.

Bambam, however, is undeterred, “Can I see it?”

“No,” Jinyoung replies shortly. “Drink your milk.”

Bambam sits backs in his seat, fingers picking at the plastic top of the cup. His mouth has a petulant turn to it. “Hyung would let me see it.”

Jinyoung can’t help but roll his eyes. This kid is something else.

“No, he wouldn’t,” he says, picking up his own to-go cup from the holder between the driver and passenger seats.

Jaebum’s in the gas station mini-store, paying for their re-fuel.

“Yes, he would,” Bambam insists. “He tells me everything, you just don’t know.”

Jinyoung shushes him. “I don’t talk to thieves.”

Surprisingly, it works. The car is immediately silenced. But instead of the relief Jinyoung thought would flow through him, he feels guilty.

He flicks his eyes to the rear mirror, catching the kid’s pursed lips.

He might have actually hurt his feelings. Bambam mumbles under his breath, eyes still on the way his fingers fiddle with the plastic cover.

Jinyoung doesn’t know if he meant for him to hear it, but he does, clear as day: ‘You’re a liar and I’m talking to _you.’_

He treads carefully, here. Glancing at the kid in the mirror. In the store, Jaebum’s just walked up front, arm full of snacks.

“When did I lie to you?”

It’s quiet and warm in the car. Suffocating.

“Bam,” Jinyoung repeats, he tries not to make his voice sound too tight. “When did I lie to you?”

The kid hesitates, but then he presses his lips together.

“You said your name was Minseok hyung,” he begins, practically vibrating in his seat with apprehension. “But it’s not. I saw your other wallets. It has all different names on it. But your name is Jinyoung, I know it is.”

Jinyoung turns off his tablet, looking back at the kid. He bravely meets the older’s gaze. “How do you know it is?”

“I hear you when you talk to hyung when you think I’m asleep. You’re Jinyoung, and hyung is Jaebum.”

There’s a pause. Well, Jinyoung thinks, can’t argue with that really.

They’ve been admittedly careless.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks Bambam. “If you knew this whole time?”

There’s a weighted silence, and then: “What if you kill me?”

Jinyoung can’t help but burst out laughing. He turns back to the front. Jaebum is heading back out now.

“If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it a long time ago.”

He takes a long sip of his coffee - too bitter, not enough sugar - when Jaebum enters the car. He drops the paper bag in the backseat, near the kid.

“Welcome back,” Jinyoung says to him, reaching out to squeeze his thigh. “Jaebum hyung.”

“Hi,” he replies, distracted. It take him a second to realise. And then he looks at Jinyoung, then Bambam and back again. _“What?”_

-

The kid is asleep. Properly asleep, this time. Jinyoung made sure.

On the laptop is the slightly pixelated image of Jackson, lying on his front on a bed with worn, red covers. His hair’s wet and he’s only wearing a pair of pyjamas pants and a black tank top.

“An angel,” he says definitely. His Korean is getting rusty again. “That’s what it is.”

“He,” both Jaebum and Jinyoung correct automatically. They glance at each other.

 _“He,”_ Jinyoung repeats, “is a child. And he seems to have no idea that he can even do these things, and you think he’s an _angel?_ Jackson, come on.”

Bambam isn’t a vessel. Jinyoung’s not even sure children _can_ be vessels. How could they possibly understand enough to consent? Besides, he’s met angels before, they have an asshole aura that they really can’t mask.

“I’m serious,” Jackson says. In the background, Mark crosses from one side of the frame to the other, disappearing into the side of the motel room not covered by the camera. “He has golden eyes. What kind of creature do you know has _golden_ eyes?”

Jinyoung says the first thing that comes to mind, “A werewolf.”

More dirty yellow than gold, but close enough.

“If he was a werewolf,” Jaebum cuts in delicately, he’s looking through the copious notes he’d taken down of everything Jinyoung remembered from his encounter with the kid up until now. “I think we’d know about it by now.”

“Let’s wait until the full moon in a few days then,” Jinyoung retorts. “Then we’ll see if we’d _know_ _about it.”_ He shakes his head. “That’s not even the point. The point is, we still have this demon or gwisin or whatever it is to deal with. And we need to figure it out, fast.”

It’s been a while without activity. Jinyoung doesn’t want another victim to contend with.

Hali, as far as they know, move singularly. Mid-level demons, targeting rural victims. It’s the controlling the weather bit that Jinyoung doesn’t understand.

“They don’t control weather,” Mark explains, coming to sit beside Jackson on the bed. He tilts the screen back so that they can see him better. “It’s something about their energy, their gravity, it causes precipitation. They can manipulate elements though. They don’t specifically target farmland either. It’s just how the lore evolved, how it was interpreted by people. The damage they inflict is collateral, but they’re after something else.”

“Souls?” Jaebum guesses. He adjust his glasses, peering into the screen. “That’s what most demons are after right? To become more powerful.”

“Could be,” Mark says. But Jinyoung isn’t really listening anymore. He slides out his tablet, glancing over quickly at the messy digital notes he’d taken.

“How about essence?” he interrupts, cutting Mark off mid-sentence.

Essence. That mysterious component that’s found in magic, in magical _beings_. It’s the purity of a soul on steroids. Millions and millions of times stronger.

“The Hans are human,” Jaebum says after a long while. The weighted silence is telling - if this thing is after essence, it might be more powerful, more ambitious than they might be ready to deal with.

“Maybe,” Jinyoung starts, he licks his lips. “Maybe the Hans aren’t the target.”

They could be collateral, or-

“Energy reserves,” Jackson finishes.

Most demons feed on strife, on hurt. These are the lower level demons, who are generally easier to kill or expel.

Higher-level demons, though, they tend to feed on human souls. An energy boost that can happen in seconds, or dragged out for years. It’s doesn’t look much different to the human eye: could be just a mental degradation. Or an unexplained coma.

But. The demons seeking more, craving more. They leave the humans behind. They go after greater, more powerful beings.

Jinyoung’s heart thuds against his chest. He’s scared to turn just a little more sideways, to glance in the corner where Bambam breathes in evenly and steadily through his mouth.

“What are the chances,” Jaebum murmurs, eyes on the side of Jinyoung’s face. “That we find two creatures in the same small town, at the exact same time?”

-

It’s too much for Jinyoung to think about. He stands outside for what feels like hours. He’s by himself, and he has a pulsing headache.

He leans against the rough brick of the motel exterior. It’s bitterly cold, but at least it’s not raining.

They’re closer to the Han family home here. If Jinyoung squints and tilts his head, he can see the edge of their rooftop beyond the night sky.

Soon, Jaebum joins him. He doesn’t say anything, just exhales long and loud and shuffles right up him until he can press their foreheads together, breaths mingling.

“This sucks,” Jinyoung tells him. “I don’t like it at all.”

Jaebum presses a long, warm kiss to his forehead. Jinyoung’s hands flit to Jaebum’s trim waist, fluttering around where his gun is tucked firmly into the waistband. The other man leans back, putting some distance between them.

“We need to get back to Hans’ house,” he says, “figure out if this thing is a Hala or not. And we need to get rid of it, before it’s too late.”

If it’s feeding on souls to become more powerful then the whole of Sabuk could be in danger.

“Okay,” Jinyoung says. He sighs, rubbing two fingers across his forehead. “I’ll see if I can contact Yeeun and Yubin. They might know something that can help.”

He kicks off the wall, just about to head inside.

“Jinyoung,” Jaebum says, a tight grip on his arm. His breath forms vapors of cloudy white puffs in the air. “Wait. We need to talk about Bambam still.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Jinyoung replies quickly. “Not yet. Let’s fix this first, hyung, then we can think about that. One thing at a time,” he pleads. “Please.”  

But Jaebum is already shaking his head. “We don’t have time to wait. If this-, this-, thing is coming after him then we need to know how to protect him.”

“How do we know that we don’t need to protect ourselves from _him?”_ Jinyoung counters, heartbeat kicking up a notch. “We don’t even know if he’s good.”

“You told me yourself, Jinyoung-ah,” Jaebum says. “Didn’t you say you-”

“Since when you do you trust in my judgement so much?” Jinyoung interrupts harshly. He’s trying to put some space between them - though there’s not much more he can go back. “You live to second guess what I want, what I feel, and-, and-, now you _trust_ me?”

Jaebum grits his teeth, trying desperately to overcome the wave of annoyance. He pulls Jinyoung back with a firm grip on his shirt.

“Listen,” he says, firm, unwavering. He presses him into the brick wall the coolness seeping through Jinyoung’s shirt - grounding. His arms come to frame Jinyoung on either side of his head. Jaebum’s so close now, mouth hovering just above his, noses touching. Jinyoung can’t look away from his eyes.

“Listen to me, Jinyoung,” he says, voice steady. “I trust you. I always trust you. But we need to do the right thing here.”

“I don’t know what the right thing is,” Jinyoung tells him, looking him in the eye.

Jaebum pushes away from the wall, and the cold air rushes to sting at Jinyoung’s warm cheeks.

“I’ve been thinking about what Jackson said,” he says, talking over Jinyoung’s sharp intake of breath. “You know, I’ve read about this. A lot. Never thought I’d ever see one but, what if-. What if he’s a-”

“Don’t,” Jinyoung says.

Jaebum’s eyes jerk towards him. “So you’ve thought it too?”

Jinyoung swallows tightly. He hasn’t _stopped_ thinking about it. “He’s not.”

“He could be,” Jaebum argues, almost agitated with conviction. “Think about it Jinyoung. His eyes, his magic. Nephilim-”

“Don’t exist anymore,” Jinyoung interrupts. His sharpness severs the conversation instantly.

Only their breaths are heard in the too-quiet streets of Sabuk. In the distance, someone on the fifth floor of an apartment complex turns on their light.

“That we know of,” Jaebum replies. His words are slow, tacky with latent truth.

There’s a long and complicated history of nephilims, half-angel half-human beings, being hidden in the depths of the world - far from prying eyes, from gluttonous greed.

“Hyung,” Jinyoung says, cold-stiff fingers curling into the fabric of Jaebum’s shirt. “I can’t handle that. _We_ can’t handle that.”

Jaebum presses his lips together, “Do we have a choice?”

He reaches back into the rear pocket of his trousers. From there he pulls out a short, long laminated identification card. It’s aqua blue, with curling script Jinyoung’s unfamiliar with.

The lamination is coming undone on the edges and the paper underneath is fraying. The picture is what strikes Jinyoung. Because although he doesn’t know _this_ face, at _this_ age, he knows this small mouth and wide eyes.

He knows how he sleeps sprawled on his back with his mouth open, how he eats two mouthfuls at a time, how he sounds when he’s petulant and how he sounds when he’s scared.

“It’s in Thai,” Jaebum says, handing it over to Jinyoung. He holds it carefully, like it’s capable of bursting into flames at any second. “I called Lisa to confirm. His name - legal name - is Kunpimook Bhuwakul and he’s nine years old. He has a mother listed. But no father.”

Jinyoung’s hands shake. Of course, he thinks. Nobody is going to put the name of a heavenly angel as their child’s father.

“Lisa’s looking through some databases now,” Jaebum continues. “Trying to find out if that woman has been in Korea.”

“You think she left him here?”

“Maybe,” Jaebum says. “To protect him. Hide him.”

“Do you think she’s alive?”

Jaebum doesn’t answer at first.

“Probably not,” he admits.

She must have bound Bambam’s grace - not fully. Humans aren’t able to do that. But the lengths she must have taken to hide him, Jinyoung doesn’t even want to know. He thinks of one of the only known parts of the spell, _blood spilled from the mother_ , and he shivers.

He takes a deep breath, thumb running over the smooth plastic. “He’s Thai.”

“Yes.”

“His bear could be a luk thep, then,” he concludes, thinking how Bambam never goes too far without it, how protective he is of it. “A modification of it anyway.”

A luk thep is a Thai angel child doll believed to contain the spirit of angels. It doesn’t though. Most of the time.

Bambam clearly has magic running through him. But he’s not powerful, nowhere near it. And he doesn’t remember much about his life - or at least, he hasn’t talked to them about it. Jinyoung had asked him before, how he got to Sabuk.

The kid had been eating a sandwich, pulling out long tendrils of raw onion. ‘Walked,’ he’d shrugged. Jinyoung had to refrain from strangling him in the moment. But now he thinks about whether there was an element of truth to it.

“Do you think,” he starts hesitantly. “Do you think that’s where his grace could be?”

“Hidden in plain sight,” Jaebum adds. “And still near him. But that means that it’s still detectable. If the Hala followed him here.”

 _“If,”_ Jinyoung emphasises. “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. We need to get rid of the demon.”

“Okay,” Jaebum says, agreeable for once. He breathes in deeply before exhaling. He takes Jinyoung’s hand, thumb pressing down gently across Jinyoung’s knuckles. “Let’s head inside.”

There’s a flash of cream; long hair blowing in the slight breeze.

Jinyoung has barely gasped before Jaebum’s turned around, body blocking his - arm outstretched with his gun. The unlatching the safety latch is loud, agonising.

Sunmi stands a few metres away from them, trembling hands held up against her body. Her eyes are wide, trained on the gun, her pink lips almost jarring against her pale skin.

“Please,” she says, eyes swinging from Jinyoung to Jaebum. “I need your help.”

-

“It’s a trap,” Jaebum mutters the next day. It’s raining again. An unrelenting mist of water that makes the whole town look like a mirage.

“Obviously,” Jinyoung says, leaning over to push the growing pile of peas that the kid has been laboriously building at the side of his plate back towards the rice with his chopsticks. He ignores Bambam’s groan of displeasure. “But we’re still going.”

“What are we doing with…” Jaebum jerks his chin towards the kid.

Bambam frowns, pushing away his brown hair from his face. His canvas bag is by his side today. His ID card safely returned. “I can stay by myself.”

“Maybe that’s better?” Jaebum asks.

It could be, Jinyoung thinks. The trap is for the kid after all, not so much for them. But that could also be the trap - lure the kid away from them. They can’t split up either - they won’t be able to take on the Hala alone. He tries to communicate this over the kid’s head.

Jaebum understands. And, it seems, he agrees too.

Jinyoung glances out of the window. They’re back in the town centre, at a little eatery opposite Yugyeom’s convenience store.

He can’t see him from here, but he imagines the way he bustles about, serving customers. The door jingles, two heavy feet planting on the welcome mat.

Jinyoung meets the gaze of Yugyeom’s father as he shakes off the water droplets of his umbrella.

The man looks at each of them in turn, eyes lingering on Bambam. Jinyoung’s hackles raise.

Before he even knows it, he’s following the man through into the aisles.

It’s just the two of them here, hidden among a rows of neatly stacked instant ramyeon noodles. Jinyoung picks one up, just to pretend he came with a purpose.

Yugyeom’s father has two stacked in his hand, and he regards Jinyoung coolly when he turns around.

For a moment, nobody speaks.

“You know something,” Jinyoung determines. It’s not a question.

The man meets his gaze, unafraid. “You shouldn’t meddle in things you don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“That this is more than a routine cop stop,” Mr. Kim says. “This is not something you can handle.

Jinyoung narrows his eyes, suspicion growing thick and hot in his belly.

“And you can?”

The man doesn’t say anything. Jinyoung watches his eyes carefully, body taught and ready - he’s so certain that there’ll be a change in his eyes, an obsidian mist or a sharp mutation.

But nothing happens. Just plainly human.

He walks past Jinyoung, heading towards the till to pay quickly before he leaves.

Jinyoung follows him more slowly. The kid’s concerned eyes are on him as soon as he turns the corner, back to full view.

It distracts Jinyoung, for better or for worse, as Yugyeom’s father disappears back into the street.

Though it doesn’t matter in the end, the heavy rolling sheets of rain prevent Jinyoung from seeing anything at all.

-

The rain comes heavy as soon as nightfall happens. They’re in the car, just a little way away from the Han family home - towards the back though, closer to the paddies than the road, hidden from sight in the shadows.

Bambam is in the backseat, his canvas bag right beside him. He doesn’t really understand what’s going on, and neither Jinyoung nor Jaebum are up to explaining it.

They’ve been here for at least two hours, the rain battering on the metal of the car. The kid is clearly spooked. His anxious questions of “What are we doing here?” and “Hyung, when can we go back?” have been left unanswered - quiet words lingering in the heavy air.

Jaebum’s keys are still in the ignition, though the car itself is completely still; cold, from how long it’s been off.

Between them, on the dashboard is Jaebum’s phone. Silent. Waiting.

Sunmi hasn’t called them. She said she would, yesterday, words stuttering over each other.

She’d heard the noises again, she’s said. She needed their help.

She was going to get her family out of the house, to go visit the hospital to see her brother and her father. She’d call and give them the signal, and then they could go in.

Jinyoung can’t see much from here, but the family car is a big bulky presence parked at the side. They haven’t gone anywhere.

In the backseat, Bambam slurps anxiously at his chocolate milk, the air frittering through the straw evidence that he’s finished it all.

Jaebum takes a deep breath, nostrils flaring.

“Let’s go,” he says, and rips his key from the ignition.

They unlock their doors at the same time, raindrops like pellets on Jinyoung’s skin - sharp, cold.

Bambam scrambles for his door handle too, but Jaebum’s reprimand is fast. “Not you.”

The kid’s hand falls away, pulling his bag closer instead. Jinyoung tears his gaze away from the boy’s wide, hurt eyes and closes the door firmly.

It doesn’t take long for the rain to soak through his clothes. He shivers as he stands with Jaebum at the boot of the car. The metal flap is open at an angle to protect the interior from as much water as possible.

The same protection sigil that’s tattooed on Jinyoung and Jaebum’s bodies, and hanging around Bambam’s neck, is painted on to the hood, pujok yellow talisman papers stuck on beside it. It’s obscured now as the false bottom has been lifted too.

Their arsenal is not the most extensive, but it does the job. Strapped to the top are various silver knives, alongside them three sawed off shotguns and an old leather bandolier holding extra salt rounds.

The bottom of the deep trunk is sectioned off: rock salt and mountain ash tucked away in the corner; several different books of worship next to a wooden cross with a gold figurine; a cache of wolfsbane bullets; neatly stacked bottles filled with holy water; and stakes and more and more ammunition.

Each of them grabs what they need, stocking up fully before setting the false-base back down and closing the trunk with a dull thud.

Jinyoung straps a gun holder to his thigh and swings a shotgun filled with salt rounds over his back.

Jaebum’s hair is stuck to his forehead, rivulets of water streaming down his face. Jinyoung guesses he probably looks much the same.

The other man circles back around to the side of the car, opening the passenger door where Bambam is sitting.

He has to shout a little, to be heard over the overwhelming volume of the rain.

“Stay here,” Jaebum is telling him. He hands him the car keys. “Don’t get out, and don’t open the door to anyone but your hyungs, do you understand me?”

The kid nods but his small hand reaches out to tug on Jaebum’s wet shirt. “I want to go with you.”

“No, stay here. We’ll come back soon.”

Only if they do, Jinyoung thinks. He’s not so sure they can take this thing on by themselves.

Jaebum leans in to whisper in the kid’s ear. He nods along with what Jaebum’s saying, mouth pressing together even as it trembles.

Jinyoung can see that he’s afraid, though there’s not much he can do about it.

Too soon it’s his turn to duck in. He checks that Bambam’s seatbelt is still on, and tries to wipe his wet hand on the back of the driver’s seat before taking the kid’s hand.

Jinyoung whispers a safety incancation, a stronger one this time, in the hopes that it’ll hold until they can come back. Or until the morning, at least. He keeps his eyes locked with Bambam’s and he sees this time, how the light ignites in the kid’s tear-glossed eyes, brilliant and clear gold - almost alive with colour.

It spreads all around them, for a fraction of a moment, and then peace falls heavy upon them like a blanket.

In the reflection of the window on the other side, Jinyoung can see a spark of gold in his own eyes. He blinks quickly and it’s gone. Just a fragment.

“Don’t leave, okay?” Jinyoung says to him, pushing back his wet hair - he can barely breathe it’s so cold.

“Will you come back?” Bambam asks. He sounds so young, biting at his top lip.

“Yes,” Jinyoung says. And then because he doesn’t want to lie, “I’ll try my hardest.”

He steps back before the kid can formulate an answer. Closing the door of the passenger seat feels like a final seal. He actively avoids looking into the car and follows Jaebum towards the house.

-

It’s creepy of course. Dark and empty. Everything creaks too much.

Jaebum leads first and Jinyoung after him, his hands crossed at the wrists - in one hand a flashlight, and in the other his weighty gun.

They check the downstairs fully before heading up the stairs. The creak of weight on old wood seems even louder in the dense silence.

Jinyoung takes a step. Stops. Takes another one. Stops.

There’s a sound echoing him. Even and spaced out, exactly like his own steps.

He takes another step. Again, the sound scrapes on the other side of the wall. This thing is fucking with him.

At least it’s here. They can finish this once and for all, one way or the other.

Jaebum is already on the landing. Jinyoung sweeps his light over the dark interior - boxes stacked on top of each other litter the ground floor.

The closer he gets to the landing, the clearer Jinyoung can hear the sound of running water.

He follows the sound, Jaebum’s back disappearing around the doorjamb. Jinyoung can see the round brightness of his flashlight wavering over the walls.

When he turns the corner his breath stops.

Sunmi is on the wall, limbs stuck clear off the floor like a butterfly in a glass case. She’s pinned, a grotesque human vision in a weeping wall.

Water cascades down to the floor, seeping through from a never ending source. It’s drips through her limp hair, through her clothes until it pools on the ground and rides, in waves, to splash over Jinyoung’s shoes.

She moans, a tired long thing, and lifts her head at the noise, long tendrils of hair clinging to her face, blood dribbling out of her nose.

But it’s her eyes. Her eyes that send a shiver down Jinyoung’s spine - cloudy white all over. If he squints, Jinyoung can see the scant impression of her irises moving frantically beneath the veil robbing her of sight.

“Help me,” she’s sobbing, head turned to their direction, eyes not seeing, “ple-, please help me.”

Jinyoung moves forward instinctively, lowering his gun, water sloshing over his boots. But Jaebum out a hand to stop him.

“Check first,” he instructs. His silver gun doesn’t move, his eyes remain hard and unsympathetic in her direction.

Jinyoung’s jacket is weighed down with rainwater, so it’s tricky to extract the flask of blessed water. He steps forward, throwing it over her face.

It washes off of her just as quick, no fervent fizzing, no grunt of pain.

Immediately, Jaebum places his gun and flashlight on a nearby flat surface, barking, “keep watch,” at Jinyoung before he’s trying to pry Sunmi off of the wall.

She screams like he’s tearing into her body, like she’s leaving flesh behind on the wall, but she doesn’t budge, she _can’t_ move.

Jaebum tries with all his might, brows furrowed tight and blowing hot air into his cheeks with effort.

It happens in one second to the next: she’s stuck, with supernaturally strong hold, and then she’s suddenly free.

She and Jaebum fall to the floor heavily, water splashing over them. Jinyoung rushes over, her eyes are clear now, back to brown. 

He helps her sit up, draping another spare amulet over her neck.

He glances over at Jaebum, making sure he’s okay, before he stands - bringing her up with them, hands tight across the ice-cold wet-slick skin of her bare arms.

Jinyoung tucks his gun hack into his thigh holder, and takes out his shotgun, sliding the first round into the dispenser with a strong pull.

Sunmi shivers, clothes sticking to her thin body. At this point Jaebum is already back on his feet, swallowing the hurt from the impact and leading the way again.

Jinyoung hands Sunmi his flashlight, keeping her in between them, even though the only thing he wants right now is to run his hands over Jaebum’s body - make sure he’s alright.

“What is this thing?” Sunmi asks, voice rough and trembling from the cold.

Jinyoung shakes his head, pressing his finger against his lips.

The walls of the corridor are drooling water, falling with loud splashes. Sunmi starts crying, the flashlight in her hand casting a trembling beam.

Jinyoung feels his hair stand on end, like a cold gust of wind just went by him.

On the floor in front of her son’s bedroom is Park Hyunsun, torrents of water gushing out her mouth and nose, chest stuttering.

Sunmi’s cries sharpen, louder, and she drops the flashlight in the current of water.

“Umma,” she calls, voice breaking as her mother’s body goes still. “Um- _ma!”_

Jinyoung holds Sunmi back as Jaebum ducks down. She’s so cold.

Jaebum checks Hyunsun’s pulse quickly.

“She’s still alive,” he calls back, inching towards the bathroom. “We need keep going. We’ll get her out of here, don’t worry.”

He kicks the door to the bathroom open, and Jinyoung nudges Sunmi towards him. The light left on the floor casts long, warbling shadows across the walls.

“Jinyoung,” Jaebum says, his hair is all slicked back eyes scanning the room quickly.

Jinyoung squeezes past Sunmi into the bathroom. It’s just as they left it last time, though now here, it’s awash with water. Thick and green in the bathtub, overflowing onto the floor, dripping from the mirror and out of taps, and everything else. There’s moss crawling through the cracks between the tiles too - like they’ve just stepped into a garden.

_“Jinyoung.”_

At the very edge, between the toilet and the wall they had pressed their fingers to, so many days ago, is a crumpled body - Sunhwa.

But right there. Right next to it, is another one - long dark hair, soaked darker with water, skinny legs, and a trail of blood oozing from her nose.

Jinyoung’s heart stops for a second, then it ricochets against his chest.

He’s a moment behind Jaebum in reaction, but he swivels on his foot too - pointing his shotgun at the thing he’s just saved.

It looks exactly like Sunmi, down the very same clothes she’s wearing. The eyes are completely blanked out again, face slack.

Then it’s eyes snap to Jinyoung, looking him dead in the eye - dread fills his stomach with acid, boiling up his throat. He presses the trigger fast, body swaying backwards with the kickback. He knocks into Jaebum, who’s screaming his name.

The salt round explodes into the ghoul’s body, all the way through. There’s a split second where it looks like the mask of Sunmi’s face is melting off and then the whole thing disintegrates into water, merging into the pool of water beneath. The golden amulet falls too, with a neat splash.

They take a step back, trying to avoid the freezing water, but only end up wading in further - water up to their ankles now.

Behind him, Jaebum swears, firing bullets in three quick successions. Jinyoung spins around, there’s a head emerging from the deep green water in the bathtub, beside, floating on the surface, are Jaebum’s bullets.

Long wet hair, slimy almost green-coloured paleness. It has Sunmi’s face too. Rising again with the same milky film over the eyes. Jinyoung aims and fires, salt burning through the phantasm with a sick bubble and fizz, disintegrating it to water again.

Then, all is still. Jinyoung is breathing heavily. Jaebum extracts his own salt-round shotgun.

They stand back to back, checking the walls. It feels like the cold is seeping into his bones.

The two bodies on the corner are still and limp. Jinyoung doesn’t even know if they’re real, and if they are, if they’re still alive.

“Leave them,” he says to Jaebum, who looks torn over whether to go to them or not. “We have to leave them.”

He can feel Jaebum nod, wet hair dispensing droplets of water.

Then comes the noise. It cuts right through Jinyoung, and he can feel sound, the vibrations, over his skin, under it.

He tries to keep his gun centred on following it. But his hands are freezing, turning pale blue and stiff.

Jinyoung blinks water away from his eyes. He thinks his vision is blurring for a second, but there really is something peeling from the wall.

“Hyung,” Jinyoung says, his voice fails him. Jaebum turns quickly, swearing under his breath.

The wall is stretching, like warm plastic, but there’s a figure coming out of it. Jaebum aims his shotgun and fires - but the salt round just melts into the gushing waterfall.

It’s still coming, even as Jaebum and Jinyoung shoot at it once more. The press of an arm, the impression of a face, a leg emerging intact.

Jaebum shakes his head, grabbing Jinyoung’s arm.

“Let’s go,” he says, and he spins them around, facing the blocked doorway.

Thick fingers pluck the golden protection amulet from the water by the delicate chain.

Jaebum pulls Jinyoung behind him.

Jinyoung’s eyes scan over jeans, a light blue shirt dress, and a fabric name tag. _Na Jaeha_ it reads in thick woven Hangul.

He doesn’t even have time to be surprised to meet swirling black nothingness of the Chief Constable’s eyes. It cricks his neck. Stares at them, “Surprised?”

Jaebum raises his gun and shoots.

The demon takes the salt round on impact, barely swaying. It opens a series of wounds on the constable’s chest, his cotton shirt frayed open. Blood drips down, mingling with water before soaking into the shirt.

The Hala says something in a distant tongue. For a moment - nothing happens.

It frowns with the constable’s bushy brows, evidently not expecting that they’d be immune to its water tricks.

But Jinyoung isn’t an idiot - he’d made sure they were protected against the demon’s manipulative powers. He didn’t really feel up to drowning today.

He smirks, no humour, “Surprised?”

Bad idea. He doesn’t even have time to bask in the response before he's flying, ripped away from Jaebum.

His body jerks up and across, right through the large window behind the bath. Glass cuts through his skin and he lands heavy on the mushy terrain of the Hans’ rice paddies.

His head hits the ground with a dull thud, his vision blurs and he passes out.

-

Jinyoung wakes up with a shiver. His head is pounding, vision going technicolour before it settles into a blur - and he can’t see past the heavy cloak of rain.

He struggles to sit up, hair stuck to his head, his wounds screaming in agony. He turns this way and that - but he can’t find a trace of Jaebum.

His gun is discarded on the ground, crooked and useless. Over by the side, he can just about make out the shape of the car, the back passenger side hanging wide open.

His heart drops all the way down to his stomach, bile crawls up his throat and he limps towards the car, screaming out for the kid.

“Bam?” he yells.  _“Bam?”_

The car is empty when he gets there of course; keys still there.

He grabs them and rips open the trunk, pulling out the first shotgun he sees. He makes sure it’s loaded, and then he limps through the rain back towards the house.

Halfway there. He stops.

He sees it out of the corner of his eye.

It’s the Hans. All of them.

He sees Sunmi and Sunhwa. Mrs Hyunsun. And two men, looking an awful lot like the photos in the Hans’ medical file. Han Heeyeol and his son, Han Sunwoo. They’re standing in a circle, hands linked with their backs towards him, soaked to the bones.

They don’t look tangible. There’s a glass-like quality to them - translucent. Like he’s seeing them but not - real and unreal -  like if he touched them, his hand would fall right through. A dull throb of noise makes up the unnatural removal of their souls.

Their heads are tilted back at an unnatural angle, mouths pointed skyward, greyish-silver smoke swirling above them - souls.

And in the middle, limp on the ground, is Bambam, a pure golden mist lifting slowly from his small body. His bag discarded by the edge of the paddy field, everything scattered out, his favourite teddy face down on the water.

Jinyoung doesn’t even think. He runs towards them, full speed, body crushing right into a clear dome made up of energy. From the point of impact flitters out a crackling web of light. Jinyoung crashes into the ground. The light fades.

He scrambles to his feet and grabs his shotgun. He shoots at the closest one, right through the head, watching it disintegrate into water droplets. They’re just phantasms then. He gets just one but it breaks the link. The souls looking less opaque.

Jinyoung cocks his gun again but he’s not fast enough, his body convulses through the air.

He lands flat on his back on the wet bank of the closest paddy. Immediately, there’s hand around his neck, crushing his throat.

He can barely open his eyes with the downpour coming down on his face. It runs into his nose.

The Chief Constable hovers above him, eyes deep and black, mouth twisted.

Jinyoung claws at his hand, trying to keep his head above the water even as it runs over his face.

Then, all at once he can breathe, there’s no pressure on his throat. Jaebum.

A silver light stutters beside Jinyoung, and he can hear Jaebum’s voice gasping through the exorcism incantation in Hangul.

Jinyoung’s throat hurts, he can barely breathe.

Jaebum is above him now, his arm pushes underneath Jinyoung’s back, pushing through mud and water to pull him up, pull him closer to him.

The surface of his skin is cold, from the water, but he radiates warmth. His teeth are chattering, blood soaking into the hair at his temple, but he passes a rough palm over Jinyoung’s cheek.

“You’re okay,” he says, breathless. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

Jinyoung turns his head, and there’s the Chief Constable, Jaebum’s knife buried in his side, his eyes are empty.

The crackle of shotguns shoot through the air. Jinyoung startles, his head turns, searching for the sound.

The smoke clears of the remains of the phantasms, rock salt embedding in the mushy wet grass.

There are two figures. Father and son.

Yugyeom looks so much more mature, when he lowers his gun, a face twisted determination. He smirks though, when he catches Jinyoung’s flabbergasted look.

His father is further ahead, hunter’s gun at his side, he’s pulling up the kid - who seems dazed, tipsy on his feet and soaked to the bone, but okay.

He’s looking at them, small face with wide eyes. He smiles uneasily, but relief flows through Jinyoung. The kid seems okay.

He shivers. The water he and Jaebum are still lying in is freezing.

“Get me out of here,” he grunts.

Jaebum laughs, moving to get up.

Jinyoung casts a wary glance at the immobile body next to him. With the arm that hurts less, he reaches out to grab Bambam’s teddy, clutching the soaked toy to his chest.

“Let’s go,” he says to Jaebum, gasping his way through the cold.

The other man nods, and he begins the laborious task of crawling up the bank.

A thick, freezing hand clamps around Jinyoung’s ankle. They're nearly there, so close, just a step away. It burns cold through Jinyoung's bones.

He barely has a chance to catch Jaebum’s eye, to hear the kid’s blood-curdling scream of his name, and then he’s being dragged belly first into the shock of ice cold water.

“Jinyoung,” Jaebum yells too, trying to grab him. He misses, catching the teddy instead. But it’s old and weak, and it rips cleanly into two.

Stuffing falls out, but that’s nothing compared to the brilliant light that explodes out of the toy.

It shoots into the sky, so bright and pure it looks like daylight - shimmering like a blanket over them, and the rain stops.

It’s everywhere all at once, filling every molecule of the surrounding earth. And then it shrinks, so fast and smooth, into one sole place: Bambam.

His eyes burn golden, so pure Jinyoung can’t look at him, eyes closed tight against the pain.

But he can feel it though, all around him - so hot that the earth dries, excess water receding.

Then it dims. Jinyoung opens his eyes, blinking away the kaleidoscope of colours in his vision.

Jaebum is scrambling to bring him close. On the other side, nearer to the house, Yugyeom’s father is using his body to shield him.

In the middle though, Jinyoung can’t take his eyes off of him. It’s Bambam, _his_ Bambam with glowing white-gold eyes and huge black wings, shadowing out behind him onto the façade of the house. Too big, even, for such a small body.

Chief Constable Na’s possessed body vaults towards him, but scarcely half way there - the earthly body drops to the floor, and a thick gust of smoke hovers above it.

Bambam has extracted the demon - clean, easy. Too powerful. It forms the barest suggestion of a shape, but then it’s burning, from the bottom all the way up. Like a match to paper. With a piercing sound, like a too hot kettle that reverberates across the open space and drills into Jinyoung's ears, the fire consumes the smoke - burning the demon completely. 

At the end, there’s no sulphur even left, as there usually is when a demon is killed. It’s like Bambam has erased the thing from existence itself. Jinyoung stares at him, dumbfounded.

Just as quickly, the fire spreads to the air, taking over the whole space: the house, the rice paddy, and the grass between it.

But it doesn’t touch them. Jinyoung can feel its heat, as Jaebum presses them closer together, but it doesn’t come near them.

The hot orange fire extinguishes in a second, and only the moonlight illuminates the night.

Other than the tranquil waters of the paddy, the place is completely dry.

Bambam’s eyes glow golden, and then settle into his regular brown.

He looks spooked. And young, and a little bit awed. But, most importantly, he looks like himself.

Just Bambam.

He hesitates, clothes too big on his skinny frame. Then he blinks and he’s hurtling towards Jinyoung.

Jinyoung catches him with a grunt, pulling him close. Jaebum wraps around them both, leans in to ruffle his hair.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay in the car?” he scolds.

He goes to say something else, then he pauses. The entire front section of the kid’s hair is bright golden blonde.

Jaebum starts laughing, he can’t help himself - tiredness, awe and incredulity all at once. And then Jinyoung is laughing because _he’s_ laughing, fingers curling around Jaebum’s. And Bambam’s laughing because _they’re_ laughing.

Despite the pain, it feels good to laugh like this - here in Jaebum’s arms. With Bambam too.

At the top of the bank Yugyeom peers over, and then his father does.

Jinyoung squints up at him, tone mildly accusatory, “You’re hunters?”

Mr. Kim’s face turns sheepish, and he looks so much friendlier without the heavy lines maring his face. He shrugs, “Retired. Supposedly.”

-

Jinyoung dislikes hospitals. Very much.

So he’s glad to be rid of it relatively scot-free. He’s almost pain-free, which is weird considering how many windows and paddy fields he was supernaturally dragged through.

The house is fully intact - no sign of water damage anywhere. Just lots of bullet holes and a broken bathroom window.

A miraculous recovery, Officer Choi Youngjae had called it, the day after everything - when he made his rounds.

Jinyoung wouldn’t particularly call Bambam’s grubby little hands miraculous though. But it reminds him-

“Wipe your hands before you open that,” he says, twisting around to address the kid in the backseat.

Bambam grumbles under his breath, but takes one of the single-serve wipes (they grab them by the handful with each visit to a fast food store) and proceeds to do as he’s told.

Jinyoung isn’t typically one for power trips, but he can’t help a curl of satisfaction flowing through him when he knows a nephilim pretty much does his bidding.

The kid sniffles loudly, nose blocked.

Half-angel beings more powerful than most things on this earth are also still susceptible to the common cold, it seems.

Bambam’s fingers are already sticky from the chocolate. He’s just a kid after all.

They’re parked outside the convenience store. It’s gloriously sunny, and Sabuk residents are milling about in lighter clothing - unbothered, even by the police reports of multiple gunshots in the night.

Jinyoung steps out to where Jaebum is standing by Yugyeom’s father. They were looking into the Han case too, even though Mr. Kim moved here to retire, wanting to give Yugyeom a simple, easy life. Away from danger.

“-by the paddies,” Jaebum is saying. “It seems Hala like to stay close to water sources.”

Mr. Kim hums, Yugyeom swinging from foot to foot. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Seems like it,” Jaebum nods. It’s still a little weird to Jinyoung - considering not a week ago they were at each other’s throats. But, he guesses, now that Yugyeom’s dad knows they’re not _actual_ police, there’s no need for defensive animosity.

“How’s the constable?” Jinyoung asks.

“He’s hanging in there,” Mr. Kim says. “We’ll be keeping an eye on him, don’t worry.”

Jinyoung hums. Maybe they would have figured this out earlier if they knew of each other sooner. He still feels it, the horrible realisation that he led the Hala right to the kid. It could have killed him, nearly did.

He glances back at the car, almost to make sure he’s still there.

“Are you going to see the Hans?”

“Yeah,” Jaebum says. They’ll be swinging by Gangwon County Hospital on their way. They’re mostly fine. “They’re in observation for a few days. You know how doctors are.”

As their conversation continues, Jinyoung smacks Yugyeom on the arm.

“Keep in touch, you little rascal,” he says to his bright grin. “Bam would like that.”

They say their goodbyes and it’s not long until Jinyoung and Jaebum are climbing back into the car.

Jinyoung doesn’t quite know where they’re going from here. He can’t bear to leave the kid behind. So now, maybe it’s to go find Bambam’s mother, maybe to hide him away from prying eyes.

The road is long ahead of them for sure. The sunlight streams warm through the windshield.

Jinyoung reaches out to squeeze Jaebum’s thigh - he can still feel the pressure of this morning’s kisses on his lips.

He smirks, heart full. They’ll make it.

Probably.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
> 
>  
> 
> ＼( °□° )／ 
> 
>    
> [bam's hair haha](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4c/de/24/4cde2458392cf0acbc41caca6e4f3395.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: I made the executive decision to change 'Ala' the demon name to 'Hala' (Hala and Hali) so as not to cause too much confusion with other deities!


End file.
